
Rv M sc 



13 OC 




|Y OF CONGRESS. 

mtr — 

©la^ ©optjm^i Jto. 

ShelfiBSkPt 

*8f7 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



ui&y 



^ SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED IN 
PRINCES HALL, PICCADILLY. 




NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY MARSHAL BA LLLXG TON BOOTH 
Tile Saltation Ahmy Book Depot, 73 Beekman Street. 
1887, 



lor COMOB-SM] 



,1b 5 CP u 

07 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred 
and eighty-seven, by 

BALLINGTON BOOTH, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D, C. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Theee are thousands in this as well as other lands 
who, through the reading of my dear mother's books, 
have received fresh light, blessing and inspiration, 
and have turned from her burning words to unsheath 
the sword which they had allowed to grow rusty in 
the scabbard, and go forth unflinchingly to battle 
against empty formalism and God-dishonoring pro- 
fession. Through her instrumentality the whole 
tenor of many lives has been changed. Those who 
through faint-heartedness and custom had long hid- 
den their light beneath some bushel of conformity 
to the world have been unmistakably shown their 
cowardice and danger, been driven to their knees, and 
have risen to shine as a hili-top beacon upon the 
world which once failed to see in them the Christ of 
God. Many who had lived to seek self -ease, earthly 
gain and the world's approval have caught from her 
pages the Spirit of Him whose infinite compassion 
led Him out to ever yearn over and toil for the good 
of others, regardless of bitter consequences to Himself. 

Oh, Christ-like, patient mission, 
Stooping low to man's condition ; 
Others catch Thy flame of love 
Ever kindled from above, 
Till the darkness fleeth, 
And the blind one seeth, 
And the bound one leapeth— 
Happy evermore. 

Since my dear mother cannot visit this country, at 
least in her present bodily weakness, I can but rejoice 



iv. 



Introduction. 



in feeling that this new book, which embodies some of 
her soul's convictions, can be cast upon the sea of 
American literature. O God, grant it may counteract 
the influence of the many books that have been 
penned and published to shake and weaken the foun- 
dations of Christ's Christianity. Those who are 
sincerely toiling to bring God's kingdom back to a 
world that has slighted and disowned His Christ can 
but mourn over the tendency of the present age to 
rob God's truths of their vitality and pungency. We 
feel that to them this book will be specially welcome 
as a fearless and God-inspired warning to the nine- 
teenth century. 

I, who saw my dear mother at the time she was 
arranging the manuscript for this volume, and realized 
the physical weakness which had at that time laid 
her aside from public labor, pray, as I know she did, 
over almost every line, that her words may be read 
aright, and that her true meaning may be accepted 
and find its way into many a conscience. 

I commit the book to God and present it to the 
American people, praying that my mother's words 
upon " The Christ of God," " A Real Deliverance 
from Sin, and " The Dying Love of Jesus " may 
inspire to "Real Warfare," the dethroning of 
" Household Gods," and such following of Christ as 
shall lead each reader without fear to face " The 
Great White Throne." 

BALL1XGTOX BOOTH. 



Headquarters of The Salvation Army, 
73 Beekman St., New Yore Citt. 



PBEFACE. 



In committing these addresses to the press, I would 
like to say to my readers that although for months 
after their delivery I was continually pressed to pub- 
lish them by many of my hearers, I steadily refused, 
chiefly because I feared that in cold type they might 
produce an impression of censoriousness, which was 
not possible when, as I believe, assisted by the Spirit 
of God, I dealt with my hearers face to face on these 
burning topics. 

During my late illness I became deeply convinced 
that it was my duty to let these utterances, such as 
they are, go forth irrespective of consequences, in 
the hope of reaching a greater number of persons 
similarly circumstanced with those to whom they were 
originally spoken, many of whom professed to have 
received great personal blessing, with increased light 
and power for usefulness. 

Having come to this conclusion, I submitted the 
MSS. to my friend Commissioner Railton, who not 
only strongly urged me to publish them, but favoured 



vi Preface. 

me with some most valuable suggestions and emenda- 
tions. 

May He whose kingdom and glory alone I seek 
bless every reader with grace to receive whatever 
truth he may find in these pages applicable to himself 
in the love of it. 

CATHERINE BOOTH. 



London, July, 1887. 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



Its False Christs compared with the Christ 



of God . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 

Its Mock Salvation v. a Real Deliverance 

from Sin . . . . . . . . . . 27 

Its Sham Compassion v. the Dying Love of 

Christ , . . . . . . . . . . . 55 

Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare 83 
Its Sham Judgment in Contrast with the 

Great White Throne .. .. 119 
Notes of Three Addresses on Household 

Gods .159 

The Salvation Army Following Christ . . 185 



LECTURE I. 

THE CUEISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
COMPARED WITH THE CHRIST OF GOD. 



The Christs of the Nineteenth Century compared 
with the Christ of God. 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 

I suppose there will be no division of opinion in my 
audience as to the fact that humanity needs a Christ, — 
that everywhere and in all ages, men and women have 
been, and are still, conscious of a strife with evil \ not 
merely physical evil represented by thorns and thistles, 
but with moral evil — evil in thought, in intention, in 
action, both in themselves and in those around them. 
This consciousness of wrong has thrust upon men the 
realization of their need of help from some extraneous 
power, or being. In all generations men have seemed 
to feel that without such help there must be a perish- 
ing. ^ 

This sense of need has been forced upon men, first, 
by the failure of their own repeated efforts to help and 
save themselves. 

Secondly, by their observation of such fruitless 
efforts in others. 

What man or woman who has thought at all, who 
has not stood on the edge of this human whirlpool, 
and watched the struggling multitudes as they have 
risen and sunk, striving and struggling by resolutions, 
by the embracing of new theories, by taking of pledges, 



Pop id a v hris tianity . 



and making new departures, to escape from the evil of 
their own natures and to save themselves ? Who has 
watched the struggle without realizing the need 
that some Almighty independent arm should be 
stretched out to deliver and to save ? Who can read 
history or contemplate the experience of humanity at 
the present time, without realizing that it needs a 
Saviour, whatever idea may be entertained as to the 
kind of Saviour required ? 

Further, this sense of need is the outcome of the 
filial instinct born in every human soul, which cries 
out in the hour of distress or danger to an Almighty 
Father, — a God, — a friend somewhere in the universe, 
able to help and to deliver. This instinct is at the 
bottom of all religions, and more or less embodied in 
all their formulas, from that of the untutored savage 
up to the profoundest philosopher the world has ever 
produced. Perhaps the cry of humanity, destitute of 
a Divine revelation, could not be better summed up 
than in the following words of Plato, who, speaking of 
the soul and its destiny, says : — 

" It appears to me that to know them clearly in 
the present life is either impossible or very difficult ; 
on the other hand, not to test what has been said of 
them in every possible way, not to investigate the 
whole matter and exhaust upon it every effort, is the 
part of a very weak man. For we ought in respect to 
these things, either to learn from others how they 
stand, or to discover them for ourselves, or, if both 
these are impossible, then taking the best of human 
reasonings, that which appears the best supported, 
and embarking on that, as one who risks himself on a 
raft — so to sail through life — unless one could be 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 5 



carried more safely, or with less risk, on a secret 
conveyance, or some Divine Logos." 

In this confession, and in that of many others 
similar, we see, as it were, a mighty sonl prying 
through the gates of life, striving to fathom the 
mysteries of being and to unlock the unknown future, 
— in fact, crying out for a Christ, a Divine Word, or 
Logos, a something or somebody who should guide 
him, taking him up where human reason and philo- 
sophy failed him. It is also worthy of note that it 
has always been the highest type of man in all ages 
who has cried out most persistently for an extraneous 
deliverer. The more conscious of his own powers and 
the higher in his aspirations man has become, the 
more vehemently has he sought, outside of himself, 
for light and deliverance. Surely this universal cry 
of humanity, in all its phases and throughout all ages, 
betrays a great want, casting its shadows before — the 
cry of the creature responding to the purpose of the 
Creator to send a Saviour able to save to the utter- 
most of man's necessity. The great realized want of 
humanity was a deliverer who could take away its 
sense of guilt, enlighten its ignorance, and energise it 
for the practice of all goodness and truth, — a being 
who could not only stand without and legislate as to 
what men were to do, but who could come within and 
empower them to do it. Heathen philosophies and 
ancient religions could say, " Love thy neighbour," 
but they could none of them inspire the man to do 
it, much less enable him to love his enemy — none of 
them even aspired to command that. That was be- 
yond humanity. Here, then, was the great need of 
a power to come inside and rectify the wrong, mak- 







Popular ■ Christ la 1 1 ity. 



ing the spring right, so that its outcome might be 
right, 

Farther, I want to remark that in the Bible a Christ 
is offered that meets this need. This is the great 
distinguishing boast of our faith — the only religion on 
the face of the earth in which the idea of a Christ has 
ever been conceived. The Bible offers this Christ. 
The golden chimes of great joy that rang out on the day 
when He was heralded by the angels, were to be glad 
tidings to all people of a Saviour which was Christ the 
Lord, a mighty deliverer, able to cope with man's 
inability, with the disadvantages of his circumstances, 
and the consequences of his fall. Now we contend 
that this Christ of the Bible, the Christ who appeared 
in Judea 1800 years ao-o, is now abroad in the earth 
just as much as He was then, and that He presents 
to humanity all that it needs ; that He is indeed, as He 
represented Himself to be, the Bread of Life come 
down from heaven, the Light, and the Life, and the 
Strength of man, meeting this cry of his soul which 
has been going up to God for generations. Here I 
stand and make my boast, that the Christ of God, my 
Christ, the Christ of the Salvation Army, does meet 
this crying need of the soul, does fill this aching 
void, and does become to man that which God sets 
Him forth as being in this book. Guilty humanity 
He promises to pardon, and He does pardon. Ignor- 
ant humanity (with respect to God and the things of 
God) He promises to enlighten, and He does enlighten 
it. Degraded, sunken, impure humanity (in the very 
essence of its being) He promises to purify, and He 
does purify it. We make our boast of this Christ, and 
we say He is able to save to the uttermost, and that 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 7 

He does this now as muck as ever He lias done in the 
1800 years that are past, — that He is a real, living, 
present Saviour to those who really receive and put 
their trust in Him. 

I know that many may answer, " This is not the 
Christ that is generally presented in the preaching 
and teaching of this age, or that is generally professed 
and believed in by the Christians of this age; neither 
do we see such results as you depict in their characters 
or lives/'' Granted. The sceptics and the infidels 
say: "We do not see these results, and therefore we 
do not believe in your Christ." And I say, looking at 
the question from their standpoint, I should feel just 
as they do, because they have a right to have these re- 
sults proved to them. It is useless telling of wonder- 
ful things having transpired a long time ago and a 
long distance away. They say, Show them now ; 
show us the men in whom this change is wrought, and 
then we will believe that this Christ always does these 
things. I say Amen, and that because they do not 
see these signs in the popular Christianity of this day, 
therefore they reject its Christ, and there is great 
excuse for them, — not such excuse as will justify them 
at the bar of God, because they ought to have found 
out Christ for themselves,— nevertheless, an excuse to 
themselves and to their fellow-men. 

I say, I grant that this is not the Christ exhibited 
in these days. 

I will now try to give to you, as I perceive them, 
those modern representations of Christ which, instead 
of drawing all men unto Him, have driven the great 
mass aw r ay from Him, and disgusted many of the ablest 
minds with the whole system of existing Christianity. 



8 



Popular Christianity. 



False Christs. 

The first imaginary Christ of this age seeins to be 
a sorb of religious myth or good angel — a being of the 
imagination who lived in the long distance, and who 
does very well to preach, write, and sing about, or to 
make pictures about, with which to adorn people's 
dwellings — a kind of religious Julius Csesar, who did 
wonderful things ages ago, and who is somehow or 
other going to benefit in the future those who intel- 
lectually believe in Him now; but as to helping man 
in his present need, guilt, bondage, or agony, they 
never even pretend that He does anything of the kind. 
This Christ makes no difference in them or their lives ; 
they live precisely as their neighbours do, only that 
they profess to believe in this Christ while their 
neighbours do not. 

Now this is not the Christ represented in the New 
Testament. The Christ of God was a real veritable 
person, who walked about, and taught, and communi- 
cated with men; who helped and saved them from 
their evil appetites and passions, and who promised 
to keep on doing so to the end of the world ; who 
called His followers to come out from the evil and sin 
of the world to follow Him, carrying His cross, obey- 
ing His words, and consecrating themselves to the 
same purposes for which He lived and died; seeking 
always to overcome evil with good, and to breast the 
swelling tide of human passion and opposition with 
meekness, patience, and love; promising to be in 
them an Almighty Divine presence, renovatiDg and 
renewing the whole man, and empowering them to 
walk in His footsteps. 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 9 

I am afraid there are thousands who sit in our 
churches and chapels and hear the modern Christ des- 
canted on, who, if asked their idea of Christ, would 
be utterly at a loss to give it. They have no definite 
conception of what His name or being means. They 
would not like to say whether He is in heaven or on 
earth. If asked whether He had done anything for 
them personally, they cannot tell ; the most they say 
is that they hope so, or that they hope He will do 
something some day. He is to them a mere idea. 

Another false but very common view of Christ in 
these days is that He is a sort of Divine make- weight. 
You will hear people say, when spoken to about their 
souls, " Yes, I know I am very weak and sinful, but I 
am doing the best I can, and Jesus is my Saviour; He 
will make up what I lack." In these instances there 
is not even the recognition of the necessity of pardon, 
much less of the power of Christ to renew the soul in 
righteousness, and to fit it for the holy employments 
and companionships of heaven. This Christ is simply 
dragged at the tail, not only of human effort but of 
human failure, and offered, as it were, in the arms of 
an impudent presumption, as a make up in the scale 
of human deserts. And yet how many thousands of 
church and chapel going people, it is to be feared, are 
deluded by supposing that this imaginary Christ will 
meet the needs of their souls before the judgment bar 
of God. 

To others this imaginary Christ is only a superior 
human being, a beautiful example — the most beautiful 
the world has ever seen ; not Divine, yet the nearest 
to our conception of the Divine which even they think 
possible, but only human still. This Christ is held up 



10 



Popular Christianity. 



as the embodiment of all that is noble, true, self-sacri- 
ficing and holy — an example of what we are to be, 
but supplying no power by which to conform our- 
selves to the model. 

I frequently find that the people who make so much 
ado about the example of Christ are the furthest 
from following it. They say it is not intended to be 
followed literally. But how else can you imitate any 
one? How can an example be followed figuratively? 
Alas ! the admirers of this human Christ make it sadly 
manifest in their lives and experience that humanity 
needs not only a model, but an inspiring presence to 
restore its lost balance, energise its feeble faculties, 
and rekindle its spiritual aspirations. Conceiving only 
of a human model, the paralysed soul finds no higher 
source of strength than its own desires and resolutions, 
and after the oft-repeated experiment at self-deliver- 
ance, sinks at length overwhelmed with a sense of 
failure and despair. It is not in man or angel, how- 
ever sublime, to free the human soul from its fetters 
of realized guilt, or to empower it for the reconquest 
of that Eden of righteousness and peace from which 
the avenging angel of justice once expelled it. A 
human Christ is only a phantom of the imagination, 
an ignis fattens. 

Another modern representation of the Christ is that 
of a substitutionary Saviour, — not in the sense of 
atonement merely, but in the way of obedience. This 
Christ is held up as embodying in Himself the sum 
and substance of the sinner's salvation, needing only 
to be believed in, that is, accepted by the mind as the 
atoning Sacrifice, and trusted in as securing for the 
sinner all the benefits involved in His death, without 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth- Century. 11 



respect to any inwrought change in the sinner him- 
self. 

This Christ is held up as a justification and protec- 
tion in sin, not as a deliverer from sin. Men and 
women are assured that no harm can overtake them if 
they believe in this Christ, whatever may be the state 
of their hearts, or however they may, in their actions, 
outrage the laws of righteousness and truth. 

In other words, men are taught that Christ obeyed 
the law for them, not only as necessary to the efficacy 
of His atonement for their justification, but that He has 
placed His obedience in the stead of, or as a substitu- 
tion for, the sinner's own obedience or sanctification, 
which in effect is like saying, Though you may be 
untrue, Christ is your truth ; though you may be un- 
clean, Christ is your chastity; though you may be 
dishonest, Christ is your honesty ; -though you may be 
insincere, Christ is your sincerity. 

The outcome of such a faith only produces outwardly 
the whited sepulchres of profession, while within are rot- 
tenness and dead men's bones. The Christ of God never 
undertook to perform any such offices for His people, 
but He did undertake to make them i€ new creatures" 
and thus to enable them to perform them for them- 
selves. He never undertook to be true instead of me, 
but to make me true to the very core of my soul. He 
never undertook to make me pass for pure, either to 
God or man, but to enable me to be pure. He never 
undertook to make me pass for honest or sincere, but 
to renew me in the spirit of my mind so that I could 
not help but be both, as the result of the operation of 
His Spirit within me. He never undertook to love 
God instead of my doing so with " all my heart and 



12 



Popular Christianity. 



mind and soul and strength/' bat He came on purpose 
to empower and inspire me to do this. The idea of a 
substitutionary Christ accepted as an outward cover- 
ing or refuge, instead of the power of "an endless 
life/' is a cheat of the devil, and has been the ruin of 
thousands of souls. I fear this view of Christ, so 
persistently preached in the present day, encourages 
thousands in a false hope while they are living in sin, 
and consequently under the curse not only of a broken 
law, but of a Saviour denied and abjured. Let me ask 
you, my hearers, what sort of a Christ is yours ? have 
you a Christ who saves you, who renews your heart, 
who enables you to live in obedience to God, or are 
you looking to this outside and imaginary Christ to 
do your obeying for you ? 

Another false idea of Christ, entertained, I fear, by 
multitudes of sincere souls, is that of a Divine con- 
demnation. 

This class of people seem to think that they ought 
to spend all their lives bewailing and bemoaning their 
sins, and are for ever crying out, " Oh, wretched man 
that I am/' " Christ have mercy on us, miserable 
sinners " ; and they go on crying this every day of 
their lives. They forget that He of whom Moses 
and the prophets did write, is come. They forget 
that the deliverer is here — that pardon is offered, 
and that He is ready to witness it and fill their souls 
with peace and joy. If Christ be only for condem- 
nation, what are these poor souls advantaged by His 
coming ? what has He done more than the law did, 
for them ? The law made them realize their bondage, 
writhe under a sense of their sins, and set them long- 
ing after freedom and deliverance. It was their 



The Ohrists of the Nineteenth Century. 13 



schoolmaster (or should have been) to bring them to 
Christ — Christ, the Son, who was to make them free ; 
but alas ! in this case He is made a much harder 
schoolmaster than the law itself, for these poor souls 
get no deliverance, no peace, no joy, or power. They 
are always piping Paul's bewailing notes, in which he 
personified a convicted sinner, straggling under the 
fetters of condemnation. But they never get into his 
triumphant notes, where he declares, " there is now no 
condemnation. " 

This false view of Christ has led to most of the 
idolatries, penances, and lacerations of Catholicism. 

The exhibition of a Christ too unsympathetic and im- 
placable to be approached without a second intercessor 
— a far-off, austere judge, rather than a pitying, pardon- 
ing Saviour — has kept millions of poor souls in bondage 
all their lives. I must say, however, that I have more 
sympathy with such souls, because they are sincere, 
and earnest, and willing to deny themselves, in order 
to find the right way, than with those who thought- 
lessly take refuge under any of the false representations 
of Christ to which we have referred. It is to be feared, 
however, that the same spirit of worldliness which has 
so largely destroyed the power of Protestantism, has, 
to a great extent, extinguished this groping after 
Christ in the Catholic Church. I confess that I 
cannot see sufficient cause for congratulations such as 
are common in Protestant circles over the decadence 
of Popery, seeing that everybody knows that it is not 
in consequence of a growth of real heavenly light, but 
only the further spread of a careless, godless, take-it- 
easy spirit, putting out the earnest desire for purifi- 
cation which formerly led to so much self-sacrifice in 



14 



Popular Christianity. 



the Church of Rome. There can be no doubt that it 
is through the loss of this true spirit of devotion that 
the evils which have crept into that Church have so 
completely over-shadowed the good, and prevented the 
multiplication of St. Bernards and others who got 
through the self-despair into the purest light and joy. 
Still, there are many earnest souls left, who continue to 
cry over their sins as though no deliverer had come. 
The Christ of God came not to bring condemnation 
but pardon, peace, and gladness to every penitent 
sinner on the face of the earth. I heard, the other day, 
a story which beautifully illustrates this : A poor 
Catholic woman, who had been in bondage all her life 
to a sense of guilt, and had earnestly sought by all the 
methods prescribed by her Church, especially by 
devotion to the Virgin Mary, to find peace and 
deliverance, when on her death-bed was brought 
into contact with one who had in reality found the 
Christ of God, and who was enabled to show to this 
poor trembling soul the sufficiency of His sacrifice, and 
His willingness to pardon and to purify. Through the 
influence of the Spirit of God which accompanied this 
exhibition of the true Christ, she was enabled to rest 
her soul on Him, and immediately entered into rest. 
Shortly afterwards her priest presented himself at her 
bedside, when she accosted him with the words, " Oh, 
you are too late, too late, I have found a better Priest 
than you, and He has absolved me. I am happy, happy, 
happy ! " 

The Christ of God is not a condemnatory Christ, but 
a pitying, pardoning Saviour, calling to His bosom the 
weary and heavy laden in all ages. 

Another of these false views of Christ is that which 



The Christs of the Nineteenth Century. 15 



presents Him as a future deliverer, ivithout being a 
present Saviour. 

It is to be feared that thousands are looking to Him 
to save them from the consequences of sin — that is, 
hell, — who continue to commit sin ; they utterly mis- 
understand the aim and work of the Christ of God. 
They do not see that He came not merely to bring men 
to heaven, but to bring them back into harmony with 
His Father ; they look upon the atonement as a sort of 
make- shift plan by which they are to enter heaven, 
leaving their characters unchanged on earth. They 
forget that sin is a far greater evil in the Divine 
estimation than hell ; they do not see that sin is the 
primal evil. If there were no sin there need be no 
hell. God only proposes to save people from the 
consequences of sin by saving them from the sin 
itself ; and this is the great distinguishing work of 
Christ — to save Hid people from their sins ! 

The Christ of God. 

Now I deny that any of the representations of Christ 
to which I have referred are the Bible representations 
of the Christ of God, or that they meet the need of 
the soul of man. They are for the most part made 
to meet the ideas of a modern worldly Christianity. 

Men have made up their minds that they can possess 
and enjoy all they can get of this world in common 
with their fellow-men, and yet get to heaven at last, 
They have made up their minds that it is all nonsense 
about following the Christ, — becoming a laughing 
stock to the world, which He made Himself every day 
He lived, — and setting themselves to live a holy life, 
which He said if they did not they were none of His; 



16 



Po pidar G hris tia 1 1 i ty . 



all this they have abandoned as an impossibility, and 
yet, not content without a religion, and finding it im- 
possible to look into the future without a hope of some 
sort, they have manufactured a Christ to meet their 
views, and spun endless theories to match the state of 
their hearts. The worst of all, however, is that a great 
many of the teachers of Christianity have adopted these 
theories, and spend their whole lives in misrepresenting 
the Christ of the gospel. 

Now let me try to put before you what I conceive to 
be the true representation of the Christ of God. We 
say that He meets the whole world's need — that 
He comes to it w T alking on the waves of its difficulties, 
sins, and sorrows, and says, " I am the Bread of Life ; 
take Me, appropriate Me, live by Me, and you will live 
for ever. I will resuscitate and pardon, cleanse and 
energise you; I am the Christ, the Saviour of the world." 
This is the Divine " Word," or deliverer, which philo- 
sophers have longed for, and stretched out their dying 
hands to embrace — which all the heathen world have, 
more or less, groped after in some dim figure. 

First : The Christ of God is Divine. 

We admit the incarnation was a mystery, looked 
at from a human standpoint, but no greater mystery 
than many other incarnations taking place all around 
us, and because a mystery, none the less a necessity. 
Humanity must have a deliverer able to save, and no 
less than an Almighty deliverer was equal to the task. 
Here, all merely human deliverers, all philosophers and 
teachers of the world, had failed, because they could 
only teach, they could not renew. They could set up a 
standard, enunciate a doctrine, but they could not 
remove man's inability, or endue him with power to 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 17 



reach it. Here even the law of God failed, and that 
which was ordained to life wrought death. Here was 
the sunken rock, the bitter maddening failure of all 
systems and deliverers, — they failed to rectify the 
heart; they could not give a new life or impart another 
spirit. 

We saw at the outset that man needed some being 
outside of himself, above him, and yet able to under- 
stand and pity him in his utmost guilt, misery, and 
helplessness — able to inspire him with a new life, to 
impart light, love, strength, and endurance, and to do 
this always and everywhere, in every hour of darkness, 
temptation, and danger. Humanity needed an exhi- # 
bition of God, not merely to be told about Him, but 
to see Him ; not merely to know that He was an 
Almighty Creator, able to crush him, but that He is a 
pitiful Father, yearning and waiting to save him. 
God's expedient for showing this to man was to come 
in the flesh. Can the wisest modern philosopher or the 
most benevolent philanthropist conceive a better ? How 
otherwise could God have revealed Himself to fallen 
man? Since the fall man has proved himself incapable 
of seeing or knowing God; he has ever been afraid of 
the heavenly, running away even from an angel ; and 
when only hearing a voice and seeing the smoke which 
hid the divinity, he exceedingly feared and quaked, and 
begged not to hear that voice again. Truly, no man 
as he is by nature can see God and live. Seeing then, 
that God desired that man should see Him — that is, know 
Him — and live, notwithstanding his fall, He promised 
a Saviour, who should reveal Him in all the holiness 
and benevolence of His character, and in His plenitude 
of power to save ! 

c 



18 



P opular Gh i 3 istianity. 



Here the Christ of God presents Himself, claiming 
to be this Divine Saviour. An objector may ask for 
proof of His Divinity. This would be far too great a 
subject to go into now, but we may glance at two or 
three considerations, which are quite sufficient, unless, 
indeed, Christ were an impostor. 

First, those who reject His Divinity say He is the 
nearest to the Divine of anything we can conceive. 
They say He is the best of the good of our race — even 
infidels cannot find fault with His character ; they all 
bow down before the spotless purity, the beneficence 
and moral beauty of Jesus Christ. All schools grant 
this. Then, taking my stand here, I say that this perfect 
being claimed to be Divine, and He claimed it so unmis- 
takably and persistently, that if you take it out of His 
teachings, you reduce them to a jumble of inconsis- 
tencies. His Divinity is the central fact around which 
all His doctrines and teachings revolve, so that if this be 
extinguished, they become like a system of astronomy 
without the sun, dark, conflicting, and inconsistent. 
Bead the Gospels and illiminate for yourselves all His 
assumptions of Divinity, and then see what you can 
make of His teaching. 

Secondly, these assumptions were understood and 
resented by the people to whom He spoke, and they 
surely were the best judges as to what He meant. If 
they had mistaken His meaning, He was bound, merely 
as a man of honour, to explain Himself, but He never 
did ; so when the Jews said, " Whom makest Thou 
Thyself/' or, "This man maketh himself equal with 
God/ ; He did not demur nor retract, but repeated, 
"1 came forth from the Father, and I go to the 
Father." This was the one intolerable point in His 



The Christs of the Nineteenth Century. 19 



teachings which the Jews, who owned no plurality in 
gods, could not endure ; that any other being should 
be one with their Jehovah was to them insufferable, 
and for this they ultimately crucified Him. "What 
further need have we," said the high priest, "of wit- 
nesses ? Behold, now ye have heard His blasphemy." 

Then, if He were so near an approach to perfection 
as even infidels admit, how was it that He allowed 
such an impression of His teachings to go abroad, if 
He were not Divine ? How could He say, " If ye 
believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins," if 
He had not known Himself to be the Christ of God? 

Thirdly, His character supported His assumptions. 
For 1800 years millions of the best of the human race 
have accepted these assumptions without being shocked 
by them. If He be not Divine, how comes it to be that 
the greatest of human intellects, the sincerest of human 
souls, and the most aroused and anxious of human 
consciences, have ventured their all upon this Divine 
word, and have seen nothing contradictory between 
His claims and the actual character which He sus- 
tained in the world ; whereas, imagine the very holiest 
and best who ever trod our earth putting forth such 
assumptions, and how would they sound ! Suppose 
Moses, who had talked with God in the burning bush, 
or Isaiah, whose tongue was touched with the live coal 
from off the altar, or Daniel, the man greatly beloved, 
to whom the angel Gabriel was sent again and again, 
or the apostle of the Gentiles, who was admitted into 
the third heaven, or the beloved apostle John, — sup- 
pose any of these men saying, " I am from above, ye 
are from beneath," " I am not of this world," " If ye 
believe not I am He, ye shall die in your sins," "I came 



20 



Popular Christianity. 



forth from the Father, and am come into the world." 
Again, " I leave the world and go to the Father " ; 
and in His prayer on the eve of His agony, " The glory 
which I had with the Father before the world was," 
and again, in answer to Philip's request, " Show us the 
Father," — iC Have I been so long time with you, and 
yet hast thou not known Me ? he that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father;" "believest thou not that I am 
in the Father, and the Father in Me ? " 

And not only does He claim this oneness of essence 
with the Father, but also that omniscience which enables 
Him not only to be with His people but to dwell in 
them, as shown in His answer to the question of Judas, 
when he asked how it was that He would manifest 
Himself to His own people and not to the world. 
Jesus answered, "If a man love Me, he will keep My 
words : and My Father will love him, and we will 
come unto him, and make our abode with him." 

Think of any creature — a David, a Paul, a John, 
daring to claim for himself this omniscience. If this 
Christ were not Divine, then there is no alternative ; 
he was altogether an impostor and a deceiver. 

From such a conclusion, however, even infidels and 
blasphemers shrink, and therefore we must be allowed 
to hold to our faith in our Divine Eedeemer — our 
Immanuel, " God with us." I may ask here, if there 
is one of my hearers whose consciousness does not 
tell him that he needs a Divine Saviour ? Would 
any less than an Almighty, omniscient, infinite de- 
liverer meet the needs of your souls ? If so, you 
must feel much better and stronger, and more able to 
help yourselves than I do. " Great is the mystery of 
godliness : God was manifest in the flesh, justified in 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 21 



the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, 
believed on in the world, received up into glory." 

But take this mystery out of Christianity, and the 
whole system utterly collapses. Without a Divine 
Christ Christianity sinks into a mere system of phil- 
osophy, and becomes as powerless for the renovation 
and salvation of mankind as any of the philosophies 
which have preceded it. But no, our Joshua has 
come, our Deliverer is here ; He is come, and is now 
literally fulfilling His promise to abide, " I and my 
Father will come unto you, and make our abode 
with you." He comes now in the flesh of His true 
saints, just as really as He came first in the body 
prepared for Him, and He comes for the same pur- 
pose, to renew and to save ; He is knocking at the 
doors of your hearts even now, through my feeble 
words, and will come into your hearts if you will let 
Him. As He came walking over the sea of Galilee 
to the men and women of His own day, He comes now 
to you, walking over the storm raised by your appetites, 
your inordinate desires, passions, and sins — a storm 
only just gathering, waxing worse and worse, and 
which, unless allayed, will grow to eternal thunderings, 
lightnings, and billows ; but He is able to allay it, He 
offers to pronounce " Peace, be still," and end this 
tempest of your soul for ever. Will you let Him ? 

Second : The Christ of God offered Himself as a 
sacrifice for the sin of man. 

The Divine law had been broken; the interests of 
the universe demanded that its righteousness should 
be maintained, therefore its penalty must be endured 
by the trangressor, or, in lieu of this, such compen- 
sation must be rendered as would satisfy the claims of 



Pop ular Gh i 'istia n i t y. 



justice., and render it expedient for God to pardon the 
guilty. We will not attempt to go into the various 
theories respecting the atonement ; it is enough for 
us to know that Christ made such a sacrifice as 
rendered it possible for God to be just, and yet to 
pardon the sinner. His sacrifice is never represented 
in the Bible as having purchased or begotten the love 
of the Father, but only as having opened a channel 
through which that love could flow out to His re- 
bellious and prodigal children. The doctrine of the 
New Testament on this point is not that " God so 
hated the world that His own Son was compelled to 
die in order to appease His vengeance/' as we fear 
has been too often represented, but that " God so 
loved the world, that He gave His only begotten 
Son/' 

As Christ represented His union with the Father as 
perfect and entire on every point and in every par- 
ticular of His humiliation, so He represents it as 
equally complete with respect to the sufficiency and 
vicarious character of His death. " Therefore doth 
My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that 
I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, 
but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it 
down, and I have power to take it again. " 

He so shows that in baring His own heart to the 
sword of justice, He was equally with the Father 
interested in the maintenance of the dignity of the 
law, and equally inspired with boundless and quench- 
less love for its transgressors. 

There has been a great deal of empty talk as to the 
needlessness of a vicarious sacrifice, and many contend 
that the Father's love flows out to all His creatures 



The Ghrists of the Nineteenth Century. 23 

independently of any such intervention ; but, setting 
aside the requirements of the Divine law altogether, I 
venture to assert that there has never been a human 
conscience awakened in any measure to the deserts of 
sin, which has not instinctively felt the need of such 
a sacrifice. In thousands of instances, even with the 
strongest representations of the infinity, value, and 
efficacy of the atonement, it requires the utmost effort 
to get the trembling soul to rest its hopes on the merit 
of even this Divine sacrifice, and all history proves 
that in no other way have sinful consciences ever been 
able to find rest. 

Third : The Christ of God is an accepted sacrifice. 

This has been attested by His resurrection from the 
dead. God has declared to the three worlds, of 
angels, men, and devils, that justice is satisfied, and 
that henceforth no guilty son or daughter of Adam 
need despair of His mercy and salvation — the accepted 
sacrifice for all men, and we know not for what other 
beings. How far-reaching its benefits are we cannot 
tell, — perhaps to distant planets and suns ; any way, 
they reach to you and to me. 

In view of this sacrifice God waits to pardon your 
guilt, cleanse your pollution, transform your character, 
and hallow, and beautify, and utilize your life. You 
have no longer any excuse for groaning under the 
dominion of sin. He calls you forth from the tomb of 
your depravity ; He calls you out of the dungeon of 
your guilt, and offers you a full and free acquittal, with 
all the resources necessary for a new life of righteous- 
ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 

Fourth : The Christ of God is an embodiment of His 
Fath er's 9 ■ ig h teou s ness , 



24 



Popular Christianity. 



He will only administer the benefits of His sacrifice 
in accordance with, the Divine standard of right. He 
will do no violence either to the government of God 
or the nature of man. Although love was the supreme 
ingredient of His character, yet we hear no words 
of an indiscriminate charity dropping from His lips, 
no excuse of sin, no palliation of the guilt of en- 
lightened transgressors of His Father's law, or im- 
pudent presumers on His Father's forbearance. He 
hated iniquity as supremely as He loved righteousness. 
The great end and aim of His coming was the regener- 
ation and restoration of man to the mind and will of 
God ; hence He confirmed the first and greatest com- 
mandment, a Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and with all thy strength." 

Fifth : The Christ of God claims to be the Sovereign 
of all whom He saves. He tells us, if men keep not 
His words — do not obey Him — they are none of His ; 
and He claims absolute inward and outward obedience 
to His precepts every hour of every day of all the life 
of every one who professes to be His subject. 

My friends, have you accepted this Christ? Do 
you know Him as your Divine Almighty Deliverer 
from the strength and power of sin ? Have you cast 
your weary soul on Him as your sacrifice, claiming 
freedom from the condemnation of the past ? Have 
you the witness of His Spirit that this sacrifice has 
been accepted by God on your behalf, and does the 
answering cry, u Abba, Father/' go up from your 
soul ? Are you living in the regeneration of His 
Spirit, carefully seeking to fulfil all righteousness, 
commending your every act to Him in faithful obedi- 



The Christs of the Nineteenth Century. 25 

ence ? Does He reign over you as the sovereign of 
your heart and life, and do you hold everything you 
possess, — yourself, your children, your property, your 
time, your influence, your reputation, your life, your 
death, — subservient to His will and interests ? If so, 
happy are you, and your example before men and your 
influence in the world will be worthy of the professed 
followers of the " Christ of God." 



LECTURE II. 



A MOOR SALVATION AND A REAL DELIVERANCE 
FROM SIN 



27 



A Mock Salvation and a Real Deliverance 
from Sin. 

I suppose that most of those present this afternoon 
are aware that the subject is " A mock salvation in 
comparison with Christ's salvation " — deliverance 
from sin. As I said last week with respect to a 
Christian, so I may say this week with respect to 
salvation, that there will be no difference of opinion 
as to the need of our race for a salvation of some sort. 
This must be too patent to need argument, — that our 
world is disordered, disjointed, morally diseased, and 
that it needs some sort of regenerating, rectifying 
process, if society is not to be disorganised by its own 
corruptions, or sunk for ever in the hell of its iniqui- 
ties. Every man knows this to his own hurt. All 
men have a personal consciousness of being wrong, 
whether they believe in a Divine revelation or not; 
nay, whether they believe in God or not. I do not 
think I have spoken to more than half a dozen people 
in my life — and I have spoken, I suppose, to some 
thousands of different classes — who have maintained 
that they were right. Even infidels, when you face 
them with the question, " Are you right? are you 
living according to the dictates of your judgment and 
conscience ? " dare not say that they are. The univer- 
sal cry of our poor humanity is, " Oh, wretched man 
that I am ! " whether it be looking for any Divine 

29 



30 



Popular Christian ity. 



deliverance or not. Men everywhere know that they 
are not living according to their own conceptions of 
right, and therefore they have a sense of self-con- 
demnation ; and this asserts itself in spite of their 
arguments and excuses. It is of no avail to the soul 
tormented with a sense of guilt to say, " The woman 
tempted me/' or "I was under the pressure of great 
fear, or shame, or dread ;; ; this is no real palliation. 
Hence the universal fear to face the future, the disin- 
clination to think about God, the predisposition to 
blind the eyes to the proofs of His existence, and to 
harden the heart against His claims. Truly conscience 
makes cowards of us all until cleansed from dead 
works, purified and restored to the throne of the soul. 

Further: not only do all men feel this sense of wrong 
in themselves, but they expect wrong in others. Even 
parents anticipate and provide for it in their children. 
Every parent knows that there is a tendency in his 
children to go astray from the very first moment of 
accountability. He knows that there is in his child 
a tendency to speak lies as soon as it can speak at 
all, that there is a tendency to perverse tempers and 
wicked passions. Hence wise parents universally re- 
cognise, whether they make any pretensions to Chris- 
tianity or not, the necessity of family government and 
careful training in order to check, counteract, or 
eradicate, as the case may be, these tendencies to 
evil ; and thus they acknowledge the necessity for a 
certain kind of salvation in their children, and they 
recognise also this fact, that if they do not attempt 
to work out this salvation, the children will bring 
them to wreck and ruin. A child left to itself brings 
its mother to shame ; we know that sadly too well. 



A Mock Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 31 

There is the same recognition of the need of a 
salvation amongst men of the world. Every intelligent 
business man goes on the assumption that he has to 
encounter wrong in the hearts and conduct of his 
neighbours ; in fact, the world takes it as a sign of 
intelligence that a business man goes on this assump- 
tion, and would call him a fool if he did not. He 
knows that he is beset on all hands by those who will 
over-reach, cheat, and ruin him for anything that they 
care, if they can promote their own interests by so 
doing. Hence the necessity for a kind of legal salva- 
tion, in the form of agreements and bonds, between 
man and man. 

I hear a good deal about this in connection with 
our negotiations for buildings, which we are carrying- 
on every day. When proprietors and agents have 
made certain offers or promises, the General says, 
" Have you got it in black and white ? " and if the 
answer is "No," then he says, "What is the use of 
it ? " Alas ! we know only too well that it is of no 
use; and I am sorry to say that this is as true of 
many professing Christians as of worldly men. Why 
is this ? Because a man's word is nothing in the 
great majority of instances. Hence the necessity for 
lawyers, magistrates, and judges; and even these 
have to be tied down by law, and watched and super- 
vised, lest even the judges should turn traitors to 
justice, and, for the sake of bribes or party considera- 
tions, sell the interests of those whom they ought to 
protect. Here again is the recognition of the necessity 
for a salvation for these very people who are placed 
as guardians of public justice and the administrators 
of the law. This salvation many of them specially 



32 



Popular Ghr i s t ta n it //. 



require when dealing with the poor Salvation Army. 
By the way, it is a curious fact that such is the im- 
pression produced by the Army, that again and again 
politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have laugh- 
ingly represented various combinations of statesmen 
as " salvation armies."" How often do politicians in 
different lands represent their countries as being, in 
some particular verging on ruin, and needing a " sal- 
vation " ? What is this but a great public confession, 
made by those best capable of judging, that whole 
nations are misled ? for in these days of popular 
government most people have to be cajoled into voting, 
to their own injury. Moreover, we have it from the 
highest public authority that nation after nation goes 
astray on questions vitally affecting their highest 
good; and it is commonly asserted that they are 
deliberately led astray by men who care only for their 
own interests, and so contrive to delude their fellow- 
men wholesale. 

It is evident that but for these temporal salvations 
to which I have alluded, the world would be unendur- 
able for us to live in. You know this. You know 
that it is not safe for a man to trust his neighbour — 
nay, in many cases, even his brother ; " for there is 
none upright among men, . . . they hunt every 
man his brother with a net." 

Here, then, is the patent, palpable necessity for a 
salvation. Now, the question is, What sort of sal- 
vation meets the necessities of the case ? What kind 
of a salvation does God our Maker, who knows what 
He meant us to be at the first, and who knows per- 
fectly what we have become through sin, — what kind 
of a salvation does He propose for humanity ? 



A Mock Salvation o. Deliverance from Sin. 33 



I answer, He proposes a salvation that deals with 
and removes the cause of all this wrong and woe. 

Our Saviour, in Matthew xv. 19, goes to the root 
of the evil when He says : u For out of the heart 
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornica- 
tions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." And the 
apostle also, in Galatians v. 19 : "Now the works of 
the flesh are manifest, which are these; adulteiy, 
fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witch- 
craft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedi- 
tions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revel- 
lings, and such like : of the which I tell you before, 
as I have also told you in time past, that they which 
do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." 
Whether you believe in the revelation or not, you will 
agree with the fact that these are the works coming 
everywhere from the evil heart of man; there is no 
getting away from that. Then I say that God pro- 
poses to deal with and remove the cause — the wrong 
state of the heart. If all men's hearts could be set 
right to-day, we should need no more temporal, legal, 
or political salvations; no more lawyers, police, magis- 
trates, or judges ; for a salvation that renews the 
heart would render all these unnecessary. 

God's plan of salvation in dealing with the internal 
malady embraces all its external consequences. 

It is evident, then, that any salvation which does 
not deal with this leprosy of evil in the heart is a 
mockery. 

As I showed last week that there are, alas, many 
false, delusive, disappointing christs ; so I have to 
show this week that there are many make-believe, 
mock salvations, which only deceive, disappoint, and 

D 



34 



Popular Christianity 



damn those who trust in them. As I walk about the 
world, and as I look at professing Christians, my soul 
crys : God, make haste to help us to raise up a 
holy people, in order to show the world what salvation 
really means, for they do not know. They are utterly 
befogged and bewildered, and I do not wonder. 

We will now look at a few of these mock salvations, 
for they are legion. First, I want to premise that 
anything, no matter how valuable in itself, which is 
put in the place of something for which it is no substitute 
is a mockery. For instance, here is a stone, very 
valuable in its right place — especially if it be in one of 
the shops in Oxford Street; but offered to a starving 
man in a desert it is a mockery ; because, valuable as 
it is, the man cannot eat it, and he will die notwith- 
standing that the stone, worth a thousand pounds, lies 
at his feet, because it is no substitute for bread. 

Now, there are endless substitutions for salvation. 
It has been the devil's plan from the beginning to 
make imitations of God's best things. Perhaps it is 
a necessity that evil must try its power upon all God's 
creatures as it did upon Adam ; we do not know. 
Probably there was no other way of working out the 
transcendant value and beauty of goodness than by 
allowing it to come in contact with evil ; if this be so, 
of course it applies to God's remedies for sin; anyway, 
the devil has done his worst on these. God's plan of 
salvation is at present in this crucible. The devil is 
trying to circumvent it, and his favourite plan for 
doing this is by forging plenty of mockeries. 

We will look at these under four divisions, — Sal* 
rations of 'theory ; salvations of ceremony ; salvations of 
mere belief and the salvation of unbelief. 



A Mock Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 35 

First, let us look at salvations of theory. You see 
it matters very little what kind of a theory a man has ; 
if it be substituted for salvation it becomes a mockery, 
— a true theory no less than a false one. 

The devil no doubt has a correct theory; I fancy 
that he is a much better theologian than many Chris- 
tians, but he remains the old serpent still. 

It is doubtless better to have right opinions than 
wrong ones, bat the best opinions will not save a man. 
I am afraid there is a great deal of preaching that 
amounts to a mere putting of the different theories 
about salvation, instead of persuading men to come to 
Christ and be saved. 

The main idea of much of the preaching of this day 
seems to be that of teaching people — instructing them, 
— which too often results in hardening their hearts, 
and finding them an easier way down to perdition 
than they would have found without it. Unfortunately 
a man feels more comfortable when he has been to a 
place of worship and heard a fine theory about salva- 
tion, than he would if he had not been, although he 
may be no nearer being saved. All preaching, Sunday 
School teaching, tract writing and distribution, or any 
other instrumentality which has not for its end the 
immediate salvation of the people, only leads them to 
trust in mere teaching, which is a mockery. It is like 
giving a dissertation on the relative value of a vege- 
tarian and an animal diet to a man dying of hunger. 
What good will your dissertation do unless you get the 
man to eat of the food about which you are descanting. 
And, unless your teaching induces men and women to 
eat of the Bread of life for themselves, it is a mockery! 
And yet how few preachers or teachers, how few 



86 



Popular Christianity : 



religious workers have this as their main idea — the 
end at which they aim. You can see the want of it in 
the way they fail to bring men to Christ there and 
then. How my heart has ached over this aimless, 
pointless preaching, I could not express. Perhaps, 
when I have had the rare opportunity of a Sunday^s 
rest, I have gone to some near place of worship, hoping 
to be refreshed or stimulated, and to see sinners saved, 
or at least convicted, but alas ! I could only weep as I 
listened to dissertations on some creed or doctrine 
which had probably been believed and approved by 
everybody present since they were children, while the 
poor empty souls were left starving for want. 1 have 
felt like saying to the minister, "My brother, if you 
have nothing better than this to offer, let us have a 
prayer meeting and get something direct from the 
great Father himself, without your intervention/' 
Would to God there were more preachers in the fix 
of a Baptist minister in a town where we are just now 
having a glorious work, who has been so stirred up 
and awakened to his responsibilities, that, on a recent 
occasion when he had read his text, he broke down, 
weeping, which had more effect than all the sermons 
he had preached during the years he had been in that 
town. His people wept too, and many of them got 
converted over again. I wish that a few thousands of 
the ministers of this kingdom could be brought to a 
similar state of mind before next Sunday ; what a 
commotion there would be in the land, and what a 
stir in hell, ah, and in heaven too ! 

But further, I want you to note that any theory 
which teaches people to rest in a mere intellectual 
belief in the Scriptures, or any doctrines therein, while 



A Mock Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 37 



their souls are left in bondage to sin, is a mockery, 
and it is one of the most popular mockeries of this 
day. 

Oh, Christians say, "Scatter the word/' and they 
have been scattering the word for generations, spend- 
ing thousands of pounds over it, and I could enlighten 
them as to what becomes of the word in thousands of 
instances when it is scattered. We always get wrong 
when we depart from God's way, and this is not His 
way. It is not written that " it pleased God to save 
by the distribution of Testaments, those who believe/' 
but it pleased God to save by the foolishness of 
preaching — by the living testimony of living men — by 
those who embody the word in their experience and 
lives, and then go and speak it in the power of the 
Spirit to others. This is the sort of preaching God 
has commanded. Study and love the written word as 
much as you like, but remember that the letter killeth, 
and that you will never save men by merely giving 
them the letter ; and I point to the miserable results 
of this plan as proof of the truth of what I say. 

I fear the giving away of texts and tracts has proved 
a most successful stratagem of Satan's for enabling 
Christians to salve their consciences in resisting the 
Spirit's urgings to a bold, straight-forward testimony 
for Christ. It is so much easier politely to hand one 
of these silent messengers, than to make a determined 
onslaught on the sinner's conscience, and to try to 
persuade him there and then to flee from the wrath to 
come. Not only is it easier for the Christian, but it is 
also much more endurable for the unsaved; conse- 
quent^ he is willing to make a compromise, and in 
order to escape from straight, plaiu, personal dealing, 



Popular Christianity : 



he will pocket a tract, laughing in his sleeve at the 
cowardice of the giver; because he knows perfectly 
well that Christians, to be consistent with what they 
profess, ought to make a desperate effort for the 
immediate salvation of every unsaved man and woman 
with whom they come in contact. The world wants 
living epistles who will live, weep, act, suffer, and, if 
need be, die before the people. The testimony of 
such witnesses will prove a living word indeed, sharper 
than any two-edged sword. 

I say that the knowledge of and belief in this whole 
Bible, from beginning to end, if substituted for actual, 
personal salvation, will prove as great a mockery as 
any other sentimental belief. 

Xo mere intellectual beliefs can save men, because 
right opinions do not make right hearts. Alas, we all 
know the little practical effect opinions have on char- 
acter. Look around you. Do you know any man who 
is not a thorough intellectual believer in chastity being 
better for a man, or a woman, in the end, than unclean- 
ness ? Is there any wicked, profligate young man, 
whom if you could take him aside and talk fairly to 
him, would not tell you that he believed that chastity 
was the best for a man, and yet you have only to look 
at him to see that he is a sepulchre of uncleanness and 
debauchery. What avails his intellectual belief in 
chastity while he is the slave of his lusts ? What 
better is the man who believes in chastity and sins, 
than a man who does not believe in chastity and sins? 
As a French infidel, answering a caviller against holi- 
ness, said the other day, " You believe and sin, I do 
not believe and sin : where is the difference ? It seems 
to me I am the better of the two/' Exactly, for 



A Mock Salvation i\ Deliverance from Sin. 39 

however true or grand a man's beliefs, of what use are 
they if he does not act them out ? " Can faith save 
him ? " Nay, verily, but such a faith can damn him. 

Further, any theory which leads men to suppose that 
they are safe without being actually saved is the most 
dreadful of all. 

Such a theory adds an intellectual opiate to the 
deceit of the heart, and prevents the truth from troub- 
ling the conscience. Now, the only use of appealing 
to the understandings of the unregenerate, is, that 
through their understandings you may get at their 
hearts, but if Satan has " blinded their minds" by 
some intellectual opiate, there is no chance. The un- 
derstanding is darkened, the conscience seared, and 
the soul paralysed. These are the worst people in the 
world to preach to ; when I had to preach to them, 
how I groaned many a time for a congregation of 
heathen. I have found such now in the Salvation 
Army — I mean, a people whose understandings are 
not darkened by these false theories and intellectual 
conceits. One can get the light in through their 
heads into their hearts, and this is the reason of our 
success with them ; and is not this the reason why the 
publicans and the harlots have always gone into the 
kingdom of God, while the natural children of the 
kingdom have been left out ? 

A man is either saved or not; the fact is indepen- 
dent of his theory, and it is of comparatively little 
consequence what his theory may be if he be saved. 
Hence many savages and Catholics have rejoiced in a 
consciousness of pardon, while many evangelicals have 
never known it. A man is either under the dominion 
of sin, or else he is delivered from it. If he is under 



40 



Popular Christianity : 



the dominion of sin, what an awful theory is that which 
makes him believe he is saved. Could the devil have 
invented a more damning theory than that ? And yet, 
alas ! alas ! he allures millions to destruction through 
it, who otherwise would take alarm and begin to seek 
salvation. He says to all the qualms of conscience 
and the pangs of remorse, "You are all right, you 
believe this or the other, your faith is orthodox, you 
are safe," frequently quoting separated or mutilated 
texts to back up his lying insinuations, such as — " By 
faith ye are saved;" " he that believeth shall be saved;" 
"you are complete in Him," etc. This latter phrase 
has come to express, in numbers of instances, the most 
utter ruin to which the human soul can be brought. 
" Complete in Christ " ! complete without any true 
repentance, without any offering of the heart, without 
the slightest change inward or outward, "complete in 
Him," while living without Him, and having no con- 
scious connection with Him whatever ; complete with- 
out losing one evil feature of the godless life, without 
receiving one grace of any kind, without doing or 
suffering anything, except perhaps a whispered "I be- 
lieve;" complete all in a minute, since somebody pointed 
to a text with which perhaps the poor victim had been 
familiar all his life. Complete in Christ with a gnaw- 
ing consciousness at the heart that it is as sinful, as 
empty, as powerless, and as joyless as ever; complete 
as a poor corpse w T ould be complete, if painted and 
dressed in the clothes of a living man ! May God save 
you from any such mock salvation as this. 

Further, any theory that leads men to trust in 
general confessions and prayers for salvation, is a 
mockery. 



A Mock Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 41 

How many thousands of people every Sunday con- 
fess to being " miserable sinners," and cry to God to 
have mercy upon them, without the slightest apprecia- 
tion of the meaning of the words they utter. They 
feel better and safer because of these confessions and 
prayers, whereas their prayers remove them further, 
rather than bring them nearer, to any real salvation. 
What is the use of prayer that produces no effect, that 
brings no answer? Here is a mother whose boy is con- 
demned to die: the father goes to the Queen to beg for 
his life. When he returns, the mother says, " Well, 
have you succeeded ? " He answers, " I have put up 
my petition before the Queen." " Well, but what is 
the answer ? " " Oh, you must not expect a direct 
answer : I have no answer, nor have I any reason to 
believe I shall get one, but I have put up my petition." 
The mother would say, " That is a delusion ; I want to 
know whether my boy is going to be released ; I cannot 
sleep in my bed till I know what the answer is ! " 
Now, I say, people who go on petitioning God for 
years together, never concerning themselves about the 
answer, or even expecting one, show that they are 
utterly insincere, and consequently obnoxious to God, 
and yet there are thousands of such people, who go to 
and fro to our churches and chapels every Sunday like 
a door on its hinges. They say, " Lord, have 
mercy upon us, miserable sinners," but they have no 
real desire for His mercy, no recognition even of the 
necessity for the forgiveness of sins, no concern about 
living to please Him, no idea of what repentance or 
salvation really means ! Is it not manifest that such 
hypocritical confessions and prayers render those who 
engage in them more impervious to the truth, and 



42 



Popular Christianity : 



more oblivious to any true idea of salvation, than they 
would be without them ? God says such prayers are 
an abomination to Him. There is only one kind of 
prayer from an unconverted soul which is acceptable 
to God, and that is the prayer that is wrung out of 
the heart by anguish for sin. 

Further, another mock salvation is presented in the 
shape of ceremonies and sacraments. These were 
only intended as outward signs of an inward spiritual 
reality, whereas men are taught that by going through 
them or partaking of them, they are to be saved. 
Amongst these may be classed Baptism, the last 
Supper, and the ceremonials of ancient or modern 
Churches. 

Oh, the thousands of souls who are resting their 
hopes of salvation on the fact that they have been 
baptized, not only such as believe in the palpable de- 
lusion of baptismal regeneration, but amongst ordinary 
church and chapel going people. As I look at our 
Army congregations in Rinks, Theatres, and other 
similar places, and note the signs of sin, debauchery, 
and crime on many of their faces, I say to myself, I 
suppose all these people have been baptized ; but I 
do not think there are many thieves, or harlots, or 
drunkards, or openly immoral people who claim bap- 
tismal regeneration. Thank God ! It is only genteel 
sinners who can bring themselves to believe in such a 
palpable sham, and yet, if baptism possesses any 
efficacy, it should be as effective in the one class of 
sinners as in the other. 

What an inveterate tendency there is in the human 
heart to trust in outward forms, instead of seeking 
the inward grace ! And where this is the case, what 



A Mock Salva tion v. Deliverance from Sin. 43 

a hindrance, rather than help, have these forms proved 
to the growth, nay, to the very existence, of that spirit- 
ual life which constitutes the real and only force of 
Christian experience ! 

It is a calamity deeply to be deplored that men should 
thus put the form in the place of the power, but they 
have always been doing so. It is only another species of 
that idolatry which has prevailed from the foundation 
of the world. Take, for instance, the brazen serpent. 
All are familiar with the story of that miraculous inter- 
vention of Jehovah on behalf of the Israelites dying 
from the poisonous bites of the fiery flying serpents, 
sent as a punishment for their rebellious murmuring. 
God directed Moses to exhibit a brazen serpent on a 
pole, and to proclaim to the bitten multitudes that all 
who would look to it should be healed. Thousands 
looked, and as they looked were cured. In memory 
of that wonderful deliverance, and doubtless also as 
an emblem of the coming Saviour, that serpent was 
preserved ; but when, in the years that followed, the 
people came to attach undue value to the ceremony 
of viewing it, — burning incense before it, with idola- 
trous worship, — Hezekiah, jealous for the honour of 
Him whom this form was only intended to shadow 
forth, called it " Nehustan/' i.e., a piece of brass, 
which it really was, breaking it in pieces and casting 
it away with the trees of the groves and the altars of 
the high places which the people had desecrated by 
idolatry. Now, we have nothing to say against forms ; 
but they are only, as it were, the bodies in which 
spiritual ideas and purposes are manifested, and with- 
out life they are useless, and worse than useless. 

When forms are exalted, and idolized, and trusted 



44 



Popular Christianity : 



in, no matter how beautiful in themselves, or how 
Divine in their origin, they become "Nehustan," as 
a piece of brass, or a piece of bread, or a bowl of 
water. As the apostle said of circumcision, when the 
Jews had put it in the place of righteousness, " Neither 
is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. 
Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not 
in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." 
And although originally ordained by God, he says 
again : " Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision 
is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of 
God." 

We feel persuaded that if Paul were here now, and 
could see the deadly consequences which have arisen 
from the idolatrous regard given to what are called 
the Sacraments of the Supper and of Baptism, he 
would say precisely the same with respect to them; for 
even if Jesus Christ intended them to be permanent 
institutions (against which there are very strong argu- 
ments, as put forth by many most devoted and intelli- 
gent Christians ever since the days of the apostles, 
amongst whom are the " Friends" of our own time), 
such is the awful abuse to which these ceremonies 
have been subjected, that we feel sure Paul would 
say Baptism is nothing, and the ceremony of the 
Lord's Supper is nothing, apart from keeping the 
commandments of God, especially that great and all- 
comprehensive commandment, " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, 
and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." 

Christians often say to me, when I put this view 
before them, " Ah, but you have no authority to remit 
the Supper, because the Lord said we were to take 



A Mock Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 45 

it in remembrance of Him till He come ! " I answer 
that He left the taking of it at all perfectly discre- 
tional ; and as to its continuance, that entirely depends 
on which coming He alluded to. " Friends/'' and 
many others of the most spiritual and deeply taught 
Christians of all times, have believed that He then 
referred, as in so many other places which are generally 
misunderstood, to His coming at the end of the Jewish 
dispensation. Any way, our Lord, who had long be- 
fore said to the woman of Samaria, " The hour cometh 
when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at 
Jerusalem (in any special sense) worship the Father. 
. . . But the hour cometh, and now is, when the 
true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit 
and in truth," anywhere and everywhere, could not 
have intended to teach that God could be more accept- 
ably or profitably worshipped through any particular 
form or ceremony than without such form or cere- 
mony, and especially if there were weighty reasons 
on the other side for rejecting it ! ! Neither is it 
credible to a spiritually enlightened mind that He who 
said, " If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and 
My Father will love him, and we (I and My Father) 
will come unto him, and make our abode with him," 
could have intended to teach that through the earthly 
medium of bread and wine His people were to remem- 
ber Him on whom their thoughts were to be con- 
stantly concentrated, or to commune with Him in 
any special sense above that in which they were to 
commune with Him always and everywhere. The 
water which Jesus gives, and to which alone He 
attaches any importance, is that which is "in us a 
well of water springing up into everlasting life " ; 



46 Popular Christianity : 



and the wine which He values and promises to drink 
with us in His Father's kingdom, is that wine of the 
kingdom which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in 
the Holy Ghost. 

Friends, do you partake of these sacraments ? If 
not, rivers of earthly water, vineyards of wine, will 
avail you nothing ; they will be as " Nehustan." 

If we were to have any binding forms in the new 
and spiritual kingdom in which all forms were to find 
fulfilment, it seems to me that there is a great deal 
more ground for insisting on washing of one another's 
feet than for either of those already referred to ; and 
in this we can see a great practical lesson on the human 
side which our Lord actually laid down. Hew comes 
it, I wonder, that many of those who regard the 
former with such sanctimonious reverence, can utterly, 
and without scruple, set aside the latter ? I fear that 
human pride and priestly assumption must be held 
largely responsible. 

Further, nothing is more evident to all who have 
any acquaintance with the history of Christianity, than 
that the undue value set upon these ceremonies has 
been one of the greatest hindrances to the extension 
of Christianity. Again and again have its valiant war- 
riors paused in their triumphal progress, and turned 
aside from the battle with the great forces of evil, to 
quarrel amongst themselves concerning these mere 
externals. 

When I was in Ireland, some of the oldest and most 
experienced Christians who took part in that great 
revival some twenty-five years ago told me that a 
great proportion of the results of that wonderful work 
of God were lost, in consequence of a controversy about 



A Mock Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 47 



water baptism. Do you wonder that we of the Salva- 
tion Army shrink from the possibility of such a sacrifice 
of the greater to the less — especially when we are 
backed up by the great apostle of us Gentiles thank- 
ing God that he baptized none of his early converts, 
and for the very same reason, namely, because they 
were making the ceremony a cause of controversy ! 

Further, what can be the value of imitating the 
marchings and vestments and songs of the ancient 
Jewish Church ? We are not accepted in the beloved 
Jews, and if these ceremonies had become, as God 
said they were, a stink in His nostrils because of the 
backsliding unbelief and hardness of heart of His 
ancient people, how much greater must the offence 
of them be when adopted by impenitent, infidel, and 
rebellious Gentiles. Neither can it be any less repug- 
nant to the mind of God, that spiritually uncircum- 
cised Philistines should dare to put their hands to His 
ark, by anticipating the signs, ordinances, and alleluias 
of the Church triumphant. What have such people to 
do with the songs of martyrs and confessors, or with 
the alleluias of the angel bands who stand before the 
Lord in His temple ? " Rebellion is as the sin of witch- 
craft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry/' 
And yet what multitudes who are hardening their 
hearts and stiffening their necks every day against 
the claims of God and of His truth, dare to bow down 
to what they call the table of the Lord and unite in 
what they believe to be the songs of saints and angels. 
The first qualification for participating in any spiritual 
exercises or ceremonies, is the renewal of the heart 
by the Holy Ghost. If you could have the very same 
ceremonial which they have in heaven, with angels 



48 



Popular Christianity : 



as your ministers, unless you had the spirit of it within, 
it would profit you nothing. " Though I speak with 
the tongues of men and of angels, and have not the 
love of God, I am nothing.-" And our Lord said, with 
respect to some of His hearers, " Then shall ye begin to 
say, We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou 
hast taught in our streets. But He shall say, I tell you, 
I know you not whence ye are ; depart from Me, all ye 
workers of iniquity " ; showing that even where Christ 
Himself was the preacher, if the heart remained under 
the bondage of sin and in the gall of bitterness, the 
hearers would only inherit greater condemnation, and 
sink into a deeper hell. 

I must not omit to say a word here on the salvation 
of unbelief, notwithstanding that I purpose to en- 
large on it at a future time. The most astounding 
theory of all the false theories about salvation, and also 
the latest novelty propagated, alas, from Christian 
pulpits and through the Christian press, as well as 
from avowedly infidel platforms, is that man is to be 
ultimately saved from his errors and iniquities, and 
especially from all trouble concerning them, by a 
simple negation. He is to dismiss from his mind 
all the creeds, all idea of any precise revelation, and 
to get light from any natural earthly source he can, 
especially from the modern lights, who are responsible 
for this new theory. He is to throw his mind back as 
far as is possible towards heathenism, nay, further back 
than those enlightened heathen philosophers to whom 
I referred in my first lecture, for he must on no ac- 
count even sigh after anything supernatural or Divine. 
He is to believe in himself and in humanity ; especially 
the future of humanity — seeing that there are so many 



A Mock Salvation i\ Deliverance from Sin. 49 



ugly facts about its present. Thus lie will have no more 
difficulties, sighings, or cryings ! 

He is to put away everything unpleasant and un- 
sightly as far as he can, even if it professes to be the 
word of God, and possessing his soul (no, I beg pardon, 
his mind) in patience, to wait and hope till the law 
of evolution has transformed our poor sin-stricken and 
groaning earth into a heathen paradise ! 

What a striking reproduction is this modern revela- 
tion, only in a new fashion, of the words o£ fools 
thousands of years ago, who used to say, " How doth 
God know ? and is there knowledge in the Most High?" 
and who " consider not that they do evil." 

Truly we may say of all these theories, ceremonies, 
prayers, faiths, and unbeliefs, which are palmed on 
man as substitutes for salvation from sin, Vanity of 
vanities, cruel mockeries, making destruction doubly 
sure. 

Poor humanity still cries out, " Who will show us any 
good ? " Miserable comforters are ye all, leaving us 
still on the dunghill, covered with wounds, bruises, 
and putrefying sores. What shall we do to be saved? 

Deliverance from Sin. 

Let us now consider the character of that salvation 
proposed by God for our race. The salvation of God 
embraces deliverance, restoration, preservation, and 
glorification. 

Of course the mere idea of salvation supposes some 
enemy, bondage, disease, or danger; there can be no 
salvation where there is nothing to be saved from. 
All the saviours raised by God for Israel during their 



50 



Popular Christianity : 



national existence were actual deliverers of their people 
from their enemies, otherwise they could not have 
been saviours. Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Nehemiah, and 
many others, were real deliverers of their people; they 
delivered from the outward consequences of sin; but 
the great distinguishing feature of our Joshua is that 
He delivers His people from their spiritual enemies, 
and from the power of sin itself. Where there is no 
deliverance there can be no salvation. What a mock- 
ery and a delusion it is for a man to profess to be 
saved, while he is groaning under the power of his 
spiritual enemies. If you are under the dominion of 
sin, you are yet an utter stranger to the salvation of 
God. 

First : Salvation implies restoration. 

Salvation to a man who is sick means restoration to 
health ; to a man who is drowning, restoration to dry 
land; to a man dying, restoration to life; to a man on 
the verge of bankruptcy it means liquidation of his 
debts, and restoration to solvency. 

The common sense of mankind has prevented any 
theoretical deliverances or mock salvations for these 
temporal maladies and destructions, but our great 
adversary, who lieth in wait to deceive, has succeeded, 
as we have already seen, in deluding men and women, 
as to the reality of Salvation when applied to the soul. 
But the salvation of God is no less real and practical 
for the soul than any of these temporal salvations are 
for the body or the circumstances. 

What is man's disease ? Sin, badness, falseness, 
spiritual death. Salvation means restoration to good- 
ness, to truth, to spiritual life, and to God. It means 
deliverance from inward evil, and renewal of the heart 



A Mode Salvation v. Deliverance from Sin. 51 



in righteousness and true holiness. It means the 
right adjustment of the faculties of the soul, bringing 
it into harmony with the laws of its own being, with 
the law of God, and with the rightful claims of its 
fellow beings. In short, it means being tut right in 
all its relations for time and for eternity. 

Second : Salvation implies preservation. 

In order to the well-being and happiness of a being 
who has been saved from any disaster or death, there 
must be a provision for his continuance in a state 
of health or safety. It would be a small mercy to 
save a man from drowning, if he were under the cruel 
necessity of throwing himself into the water again 
to-morrow; and equally small would be the mercy of 
pardoning a sinner, and restoring him to a sense of 
peace and purity, if no provision had been made for 
his continuance in such a state of salvation. The 
salvation of God contemplates all the weaknesses and 
necessities of fallen human nature; hence the Christ 
of God becomes " the author of eternal salvation to 
all them that obey Him." He not only restores, but 
He promises to dwell in His people as the power of 
an endless life, enabling them to purify their hearts 
by faith, to love God with all their soul and strength, 
and to offer themselves as living sacrifices, holy and 
acceptable in His sight. He promises to empower 
them to resist the devil, to keep themselves unspotted 
from the world, and to fight manfully under the 
banner of His cross till death. 

Do you ask for living witnesses of such a salvation ? 
Thank God, there are thousands who can testify that 
they have passed from darkness to light, that they 
have been delivered out of the hands of all their 



52 



Popular Christianity : 



enemies, and are now enabled to serve God, walking 
before Him in righteousness and holiness day by day — 
thousands, not of genteel, refined, religiously trained 
people, such as most of you here to-day, but from 
amongst the most ignorant, neglected, besotted, and 
openly wicked of earth's populations. They stand 
forward, an exceeding great army of witnesses to the 
reality of the salvation of God, and to the power of His 
Christ to deliver, to restore, to purify, and to keep all 
those who really receive and obey Him. 

Third: The Salvation of God embraces also glori- 
fication. 

How do we know ? Well, first, reasoning from 
analogy, and seeing that the great change wrought in 
true saints is in the soul, and that it manifests itself 
in spiritual and heavenly instincts, dispositions, and 
aspirations, which do not find their full development or 
satisfaction in this life, we conclude that there is a 
future and more congenial sphere for such development 
and satisfaction. 

Secondly, we have the most satisfactory evidence 
which mortals can give, of future glorification in the 
fact that many are glorified before our eyes in death. 
Amidst the humiliation, pains, and agonies of physical 
dissolution, we see the soul emerging 1 from the wreck 
of its physical environment, triumphing over him who 
hath the power of death, and in regal majesty pluming 
its wings for its final flight, and in view of such a 
victory, human reason, no less than Divine revelation, 
declares : "Death is swallowed up in victory." 

Are there any here who want salvation ? Come and 
try our Saviour Lord. He can cure your disease, 
extract the poison out of your heart, and make you 



A Mode Salvation v. Deliverance f rom Sin. 53 



new creatures ! We testify that He has done this for 
some of us on this platform ; whereas we once were 
the children of wrath, because the children of sin, even 
as others, now He has made us the children of God 
and of light, enabling us to seek those things that are 
above. 

Consistently with our profession, we consecrate our- 
selves, our whole being, our children, influence, time, 
life, and, if need be, death, to the pressing of this sal- 
vation on the attention and acceptance of our fellow- 
men. We make all things bow down before this un- 
bending resolution, to seek and to save the lost. 




LECTURE III. 

SHAM COMPASSION AND THE DYING LOVE 
CHRIST. 



Sham Compassion and the Dying Love of Christ. 



The Sham Comjiassiov. 

Benevolence lias come somewhat into fashion of late. 
It has become the correct thing to do the slums, 
since the Prince of Wales did them ; and this general 
idea of caring in some way or degree for the poor and 
wretched has extended itself even into the region of 
creeds, so that we have now many schemes for the 
salvation of mankind without a real Saviour. 

Do not misunderstand me. I have no objection — 
nay, I rejoice in any real good being done for anybody, 
much more for the poor and suffering — I have no ob- 
jection that a large society of intelligent Christians 
should take up so noble an object as that of caring for 
stray dogs, providing it does not interfere with caring 
for stray babies ! I desire not to find fault with what 
is good, but to point out the evil which, to my mind, 
so largely diminishes the satisfaction one would other- 
wise feel in much benevolent effort being put forth 
around us. As I said at the beginning, the most 
precious stone given instead of bread is useless to a 
starving man. 

Surely nobody ever cared for poor suffering hu- 
manity so much as Jesus Christ. He gladly put forth 
His mighty power for the healing and feeding of the 
body, and He laid it down most distinctly that all who 

57 



58 



Popular Christianity. 



were true to Him must love the poor and give up 
their all for them in the same practical way in which 
He did ; but all this real brotherhood did not prevent 
His keeping the great truths of salvation ever to the 
front, and applying them as relentlessly to the poor as 
to the rich, and vice versa. 

But now in the name of Christ we are asked to 
believe either that the truest way to carry oat His 
intentions is to ignore men^s souls and care only for 
their bodies, or else to join with this sort of material 
salvation some theory that will practically get rid of 
all serious soul-need. 

The First Scheme 
of salvation without a Christ provides for attention to 
all the needs of the body, ignoring the soul. 

This system has not only become more popular in 
many Christian circles than any of Christ's teachings, 
but some of its advocates actually go so far as to place 
it in favourable contrast with any spiritual work what- 
soever, thus plainly intimating that those who really 
have the spirit of Christ show it better by devotion 
to these so-called practical ends than by what are 
assumed to be the less practical efforts which have 
regard to the world to come. This religion of bodily 
compassion may almost be said to have many sects 
devoted to it, each having their own favourite theory. 

First, we have the educationalists. 

These almost abandon the existing generation, but 
are confident of the results of their labours upon the 
coming one, such 'results being conveniently remote. 
But whether in connection with week-day or Sunday 
schools, this plan has had at least the trial of one 
generation, with extremely bad results so far as we 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ, 59 

can judge. What a mockery of mankind to suppose 
or to teach that mere information can satisfy its wants, 
when the more information men get, the more clearly 
we see the reign of evil in the world, and the hopeless- 
ness of attaining to righteousness, so far as human 
power is concerned. Yet, strange to say, the efforts 
of an enormous proportion of the mission agencies at 
work are directly devoted to education, and the ablest 
heathen in the world to-day are those who have been 
carefully instructed in missionary institutions, and 
have used their education to obtain higher positions 
and- greater influence in the world, with which they 
now the better withstand the gospel of Christ. 

Many of the more sensible Christians, perceiving 
how little ordinary education can do for the toiling 
masses, devote their attention to mechanical educatiou, 
hoping to raise the position and prospects of the 
working classes by teaching them how to put a better 
finish on their daily tasks, although it is notorious that 
the cleverest of workmen are frequently the greatest 
drunkards and the most miserable of men. 

Second on this list, for the regeneration of society, 
we have the house-builders. 

These are afflicted, and rightly so, with the over- 
crowded condition of working-class dwellings, and 
consider that all will be well when the people are 
better housed, shutting their eyes to the condition of 
multitudes who may be seen to-day living in the 
greatest sin and misery in well-built modern dwellings. 
Certainly it is a shameful scandal on those Christian 
landlords who keep their tenants in buildings unfit for 
dogs ; but, after all, not so much more shameful than 
the conduct of those who, although aroused to the 



GO 



1 y ojJ u la r Christ ianiiy. 



frightful condition of the masses, deliberately attempt 
their improvement on the same principles as if they 
were cattle, mainly by means of buildings which pay 
a liberal interest. No one could possibly be more 
thankful than I should to see the compassion which 
has of late found such loud expression in words, em- 
bodied in some practical scheme for the provision of 
comfortable, wholesome houses for the poor, at such 
rental as they could comfortably pay ; but to provide 
this, with land under our present iniquitous system, 
will require a benevolence willing to " lend, hoping for 
nothing again." 

Thirdly : Next comes the total abstinence plan for 
the salvation of the people. 

Amongst those who devote- themselves to this 
sphere of labour there are some of whom I would 
speak with the greatest respect, namely, those who 
perceive that in all these outward things there is no 
remedy without some radical internal change. The 
majority, however, observing that drink has more 
than anything else contributed to the degradation of 
the people, concentrate their efforts upon their de- 
liverance from this one evil — unquestionably a great 
temporal good — but we have only to look across the 
Channel to see abundant evidence that the people may 
be almost clear of drunkenness without being, for that 
reason, any nearer to Goal or true happiness. To 
soberise without saving can only be compared to the 
action of a set of people who should with heroic effort 
drag drowning men ashore, and then leave them 
lying all unconscious within reach of the waves. 

Fourthly: Another scheme of temporal salvation may 
be represented as reselling work. 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 61 



There are benevolent efforts of many kinds put forth 
for the rescue of various classes of fallen or en- 
dangered people from their several perils, without a 
thought of placing them in spiritual safety. I am not 
speaking with the least desire to depreciate any of 
these efforts ; but what I would point out is, that 
while Christ held up for condemnation the priest who 
haughtily passed by the poor victim, He no less held 
up to condemnation the Levite who deliberately looked 
at his necessities and yet passed on. I desire to give 
every credit for true kindly feeling on behalf of the 
fallen or suffering; but it seems to me unaccountable 
that intelligent beings should look upon any form of 
human ruin without realizing that something must be 
done within } as well as without, in order to produce 
any lasting change for the better. 

Fifthly : Another plan of temporal salvation is the 
"providing for needy children. 

This is one of the most favourite hobbies of benevo- 
lent people, and properly so, if it were only carried 
out in the right way. But how astounding, that 
people professing to revere and follow Christ should 
be capable of entertaining any schemes which under- 
take the guardianship of children, and yet which 
ignores their spiritual necessities, which trains and 
teaches them how to get on in the world without God. 
Alas ! I know from personal experience and actual 
contact with some of the children turned out of orphan 
asylums of high reputation in Christian circles, that, 
so far as any real living acquaintance with the things 
of God, or any practical carrying out of the teachings 
of Jesus Christ, are concerned, they might as well 
have been brought up amongst infidels j and I am by 



62 



Popular Christianity. 



no means alone in this opinion. I have reason to 
believe,, that in many such instances, nothing would be 
more highly resented than any attempt to make such 
children realize the willingness and sufficiency of a 
personal living Saviour to renew their hearts and to 
enable them to walk in obedience to His will, and to 
keep themselves " unspotted from the world." Dry 
conventional dogmas and ceremonies constitute the 
only notion that thousands of such children have of 
the religion of Jesus Christ; and no wonder, con- 
sidering the specimens they have had exhibited to 
them in the conduct of many of those to whom their 
poor little lives and hearts have been committed. I 
have many times said what I here deliberately repeat, 
that if I were dying and leaving a family of helpless 
children, I would leave it as my last request that they 
might be divided — one here, and another there — 
amongst any poor, but really godly, families who 
would receive them, rather than they should be got 
into the most highly trumpetted orphanage with which 
I am acquainted ; for I should infinitely prefer that 
their bodies should lack necessary food and attention, 
rather than that their poor little hearts and souls should 
be crushed and famished for want of love, both human 
and Divine. Children brought up without love are 
like plants brought up without the sun. I would 
suggest to some of you ladies who may be on com- 
mittees, or who might possibly get on to them, that 
you would be doing God and humanity good service 
by visiting these institutions, not on specified days, 
but at unthought-of hours or seasons ; for instance, 
get up a little earlier and go and insist on joining the 
children at their breakfast table. On other occasions, 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 63 



demand admission to the schoolroom, and observe the 
countenance and manner of those paid to instruct 
these children ; in short, observe the deportment of 
the paid servants of the institution all the way 
through. A still better way, by-the-bye, of following 
your Saviour and serving your generation, would be 
to take some such children yourselves and bring them 
up with all the love and care with which you bring up 
your own, or would have done so had God granted 
you the privilege. It will be a happy day for England 
when Christian ladies transfer their sympathies from 
poodles and terriers to destitute and starving children ! 

Sixth. Another scheme, perhaps the lowest of these 
material systems of salvation, is the feeding system. 

I mean that system in which large sums of money 
are spent, merely upon providing some special feast 
for those who are well known to be, as a rule, almost 
without food. Now, I think you will all believe me 
when I say that I rejoice in every bite or sup provided 
for the needy, but I cannot help seeing how mon- 
strously all this exhibits the recklessness of the Chris- 
tian world as to the greater needs of the perishing. 
Some of the most intelligent and highly placed people 
in the country may be seen looking complacently on 
upon the ragged, hungry crowd, who are eagerly de- 
vouring the only good meal perhaps which they have 
had for a twelvemonth, or which is likely to be within 
their reach for as long again, looking on without 
apparently having their sense of satisfaction in the 
slightest degree ruffled by the thought (if such people 
ever do think) about the lives which these "poor 
creatures" live during the other 364 days of the year ! 
Such observers do not seem to look behind the staring 



64< 



Popular Christianity. 



eyes and hollow cheeks and savage ferocity of the 
eaters. The starving hunger, the devilish dispositions 
and abject despair of the "man inside" does not seem 
to trouble them. 

Now, what I want to impress upon you is, not that 
these bodily wants are unworthy of the attention 
bestowed upon them, — for I regard it as a crying 
shame that such wants should not have a thousand 
times more attention, and in a thousand times more 
comprehensive fashion than they at present receive,- — 
but what I complain of is, the attempt to substitute 
any or all of these for a thorough work in the heart ; 
and when such " charity " is carried out on the long 
pole system, and yet paraded in the name of Christ, I 
regard it as rather an insult than a credit to His name. 
It seems to me that the Popular Christianity which 
would put these things in the place of the gospel is 
only another of the clever shams of the devil by which 
to ruin our race, and to turn aside God's people to 
broken cisterns, only insuring a more eternal weight 
of misery at the cost of a little present relief. 

Oh, friends, you who have health, talent, and means, 
make up your minds on which side you will act. Re- 
member that in the light of that judgment which is 
coming on, it will appear worse than useless to have 
expended your energies and powers on doing that kind 
of good which will not last, which will, in fact, by 
itself, serve the enemies' purpose rather than otherwise. 
Either do as Christ commands you, or cease to call your 
work by His name. Do not let any one delude you 
with the idea that you are following Christ, or doing 
that work which is peculiarly His, in contradistinction 
to all merely human benevolence and earthly salvation, 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ 65 

unless you are seeking first His kingdom, both within 
your own soul and every one else's. 

The Second Scheme. 

The second of these schemes of salvation without a 
Saviour is even worse than that which I have already 
described ; for while that tended to turn the thoughts 
of men from the world to come to some good or advan- 
tage of a temporal kind, this would lay a degrading 
hand upon eternity itself, and, under pretence of 
elevating humanity, would push it into a future life 
with its deepest intuitions all scorched up, and its 
highest aspirations disappointed and blighted. 

Here, again, are to be found various sects, etc. 

First comes universalism. This theory would make 
men into mere puppets, who for the time being are 
allowed to be the prey of an evil power, but after a 
certain amount of suffering are to be picked up by a 
better power. Like some unhappy country whose 
patriotic force has been crushed out of it until it has 
become the helpless prize, first of one monarch and 
then of another, so the kingdom of the human soul is 
to pass from evil to good and from Satan to God. 

The blackest wretch on earth, who has made his 
home a hell, and spread moral ruin as widely as he 
could reach, is, according to this theory, to be saved 
even as the purest saint ; for " all men " are to be 
saved — by repentance and a holy life, if they choose, 
if not, still they are to be saved — by their own free 
will, if they have fixed their affections on things above ; 
but if, on the other hand, they have loved sin and vice, 
and committed all the catalogue of crimes, still salva- 
tion is to come out of devilry, and a clean thing out of 



66 Popular Christianity. 



an unclean ! To try to make men believe in such a 
system seems to me to be no less insulting to their 
understandings than it is shocking to their consciences, 
and defiant of the plainest teachings of Scripture com- 
mon sense and analogy. 

The extent of our present knowledge with respect 
to a better world is that it is the abode of those " who 
have overcome " evil. Its songs are of victory ! Its 
inhabitants renounced the mark of the beast on earth, 
washed their robes and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb, kept the commandments of God, and 
through much tribulation were faithful unto death. 
To this assemblage of crowned victors, the universalist 
would introduce the man who, while on earth, over- 
came not evil but good, who was victorious, not over 
his own passions, the temptations of the devil, and the 
forces of evil around him, but over the dictates of his 
own conscience, the influences and agencies which God 
put in operation in order to save him, and over all the 
forces of righteousness with which he came in contact. 
Strange mercy ! to send a man like this to a heaven 
where every song would remind him of defeat and 
degradation, and every crown and psalm make con- 
spicuous his false and ignominious position. Strange 
justice also which gives the prize to him who never 
won it, nay, who despised the conditions of the contest, 
and refused to enter the lists ! 

Second in this scheme comes what I shall designate 
as the all love theory. 

The propounders of this theory, without daring 
actually to contest the great facts of revelation, would 
have us be silent about the most serious of them, lest 
we should shock the people. They tell us gravely that 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Ohrist. 67 



men will be " repelled from the gospel/' if its truths 
about judgment and hell are not kept in the back- 
ground ; tell, say they, about the Father's love, but do 
not talk about "damnation" and "the wrath to come." 
Strange mercy this, to let men perish rather than tell 
them that sin breeds a hell from which none can de- 
liver them. What should we think of a father too 
merciful to tell us the truth ? Should we not say he was 
cruel? The child playing on your hearth-rug might 
well complain if you will not tell him that fire burns, 
because, forsooth, he might think you cruel to have it 
there, and so you leave him to find it out by falling in ! 
" Hush, do not frighten the people ; " sing to them, 
talk sweetly to them; there are no modern words for 
hell and such-like horrors. In ancient days there were 
prophets, whose fiery warnings of judgment to come 
led whole nations to repentance, but men think they 
know better now. The Grod who sent those poor old 
fanatics to speak plain words of wrath and denuncia- 
tion is not their God. His words of burning reproof 
and fearful threatening is not their burden. Their 
message is some " sweet text " tied to a bunch of 
flowers ; their burden can be given by " Saturday even- 
ings for the people," where " comic readings," " gym- 
nastics," " secular music by the choir " are the con- 
verting measures deemed most suitable. Alas ! alas ! 
such maudlin souls are not worthy to deal with the 
things of eternity ! Who wants in the hospital a 
man too tc tender " to probe the wound, too " merci- 
ful " to amputate the mortifying limb, too " loving " 
to say with firmness, Do this, bear this, or die ? Away 
with such a sentimental surgeon, you would cry ; send 
him to pick rose leaves, where his feeble hands will do 



68 Popular Christianity. 



no mischief. And yet these over-merciful friends I 
am talking* about would spiritually elevate the masses 
by twaddling to them in their sins and rebellion, about 
love, and sweetness, and peace, when, if they did not 
shut their ears, and were willing to catch the sound, 
they would hear the thundering echoes from every 
sinner's conscience, "There is no peace to the wicked ;" 
" Wrath to come, wrath to come ! " 

Third. Next in this catalogue of modern salvations 
comes the theory of doubt. 

These doubters, while manifestly very shaky as to 
their own theory, argue that all is " too uncertain for 
us to speak positively as to eternity." As we have 
before noted, their scheme for elevating men is to teach 
know-nothingness. They seem to think that doubt 
in itself is something very ennobling, that is, in things 
spiritual, for in things temporal they have faith enough, 
and also exact it from others. They claim explicit 
trust in their business relations, perfect confidence in 
their domestic lives, but appear to think that to doubt 
the great God and His revelation will somehow prove 
a great blessing and benefit to mankind; "as to eternal 
things it is not seemly to speak positively." 

In yonder back street, ah, even in the worst dens 
of vice, are found men who have in the depths of their 
sinful hearts some hidden memory, which is the link 
to holy things. Perhaps they have stood when boys 
by the dying bed of some humble believing father, who 
declared in his last hours that he knew in whom he 
had believed ; or perhaps, even in the later and blacker 
days of their lives, they have seen a little one go from 
their own dark homes with a heavenly smile upon its 
face, and the words, "Jesus has come to fetch me," 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 69 



on its lips ; and these men believe without a doubt in 
the God who, somehow, made their fathers and their 
children know Him, and some day they mean to turn 
to Him ; but the chains of an evil life are holding them 
down with the " masses " of desperate and dangerous 
sinners around them. To these the modern scheme 
comes with its new light, and lays its withering touch 
on these memories of good. "We cannot know," 
it says ; " women may have dreamt, and children 
believed, old men may have had their sick fancies, but 
it is better to be without that which is delusive ; the 
only certain thing is that all is uncertain, the manly 
thing is to doubt." 

Ah ! rich man, you may sit in your palace-like home, 
where nothing unpleasant is now allowed to enter, and 
it may seem little loss to you, so far, that your belief 
in eternal things has been loosened ; but to the poor 
man in his bare life, and to the man who is bound by 
some sinful chain of vice, and whose earthly career has 
not another gleam of hope, it becomes the final stroke 
of misery and degradation to make him think that he 
cannot know with any certainty any better things than 
those which now surround him. If there is not any- 
where in the universe a Saviour's hand, whose clasp 
he may yet feel, and on whose strength he may depend 
to draw him up out of his drunken jail- bird existence 
to something purer and better, some day, when he 
shall have made up his mind to be saved, then his one 
door of hope is closed, and he realizes, with a bitterness 
which will drown itself in fresh outbursts of sin and 
villainy, that there is no true light or guide anywhere 
for anybody. Granted that the one guide is untrust- 
worthy, the one beacon-light possibly false, he is out 



70 Popular Christianity. 



on the sea of life without a spark of hope or cheer. 
Shipwreck and eternal ruin may be the next event at 
any hour. 

Fourth. " The Christian free-thinkers " next claim 
our attention. 

These are bolder than the latter class, denying what- 
ever seems to them to be objectionable in the Scrip- 
tures. The inspiration of the Bible is to them on a 
level with that of Shakespeare or Homer, and for any- 
thing they do not like they have a free rendering, or 
a cool excision. They would take away what they fancy 
to be stumbling-blocks in the path of men, without 
stopping to consider whether God Himself placed them 
there as guiding-posts. Ah, what contempt such men 
would feel for the word "free," if it were applied in 
other ways. Who would tolerate the " free " soldier, 
who set up his own notions as to military matters, and 
at the critical hour of the fight was found obeying and 
leading others to obey orders which had been altered 
by the omission of all which he considered objection- 
able ! Who would for long be retained in her Majesty's 
household who should presume to alter the rules of 
court behaviour, and to expunge what he deemed irk- 
some? And yet the revelation which is to train 
servants for the eternal household of the King of 
kings, and the laws laid down by the Lord of hosts, 
by which His battles are to be fought, may be treated 
with a free hand, and tinkered and paired — obeyed or 
disobeyed — according to the notions of men who love 
their own will better than anything else in heaven or 
on earth ! Alas, I fear it may be said of these doubters 
that "while they promise men liberty, they themselves 
are servants to corruption," and I would remind them 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 71 

"how that the Lord, having saved the people out of 
the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that 
believed not." 

We might go on to multiply these modern schemes 
for the improvement and elevation of man, for they 
are legion, and some of them doubtless propounded by 
those who have much real concern and compassion for 
the multitudes, but which all the more, because there 
is so much of good in them, are the most dangerous 
and ruinous to the highest interests of mankind. 

Take away from the way-faring man the absolute 
certainty which he feels about the truth of the gospel, 
and where do you leave him? Wretched and hopeless 
in the very centre of his being. You may have fed 
his body, you may have clothed and housed him, 
you may have educated his children, you may have 
nursed him in sickness and comforted him in sorrow ; 
but for all this he is left on the moors to wander and 
die in desolation and darkness, in spite of all your 
feeding and all your loving rush-lights. 

This sort of compassion is the most cruel ignis 
fatuus the devil ever invented. Depend upon it, you 
cannot be more merciful than Jesus, who says to-day 
to you and to all men, "He that believeth shall be 
saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned. 33 

The Dying Love of Christ. 

We propose now to consider in juxtaposition with 
all these modern schemes for the elevation of man- 
kind, on which we have been remarking, that one 
which is universally admitted to be the model scheme; 
the ideal of all that is lovely, tender, ennobling, and 
comprehensive. 



72 Popular Christianity. 



The scheme of Christ, with its aims and modes, as 
shown in the story of His life- compassion for the world. 
I contend that the compassion of Jesus stands out 
distinguished as of another kind from all the philan- 
thropic plans which we have been considering. 

First : By its clear perception of the ivorst feature of 
man's condition. 

No doubt the Saviour's heart ached in sympathy 
with the mass of human sorrow, sickness, and poverty 
brought before Him. Where we have only a glimpse 
of men's troubles as we move hurriedly up and down 
among them, He had the whole sad story unfolded to 
Him, and His keen love responded tenderly to every 
cry for help. Nevertheless, He was never diverted 
from the great central danger. To Him the sorrowful 
troubled crowd were not merely poor and suffering, 
not merely oppressed by unjust laws, and crowded 
into badly constructed dwellings, — not merely hungry, 
hard-worked, and comfortless; these were incidents 
which He sometimes alleviated and more often shared, 
but the crowning peril, the absolutely certain woe which 
eclipsed, in His sight, every other, was the loss of the 
soid. He flings aside contemptuously the thought 
that living well in this world was a real benefit. The 
fool of all the* world, the man who in His opinion 
stood in most awful risk, is drawn by Him in a parable 
sketch which is little dwelt on in these days. This 
fool in Christ's picture was the rich man with bursting 
barns and "so much goods" that he knew not how to 
dispose of them. He was a man who had been elevated 
by education enough, at any rate, to enable him to do 
a good business; he enjoyed the benefits of a good 
dwelling, good food, and, doubtless, the best society 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 73 

within his reach; and yet he was a fool, and Christ 
holds him up as the last sample of such,, simply because 
he left his soul in jeopardy. 

Again, Christ draws another picture, blacker and 
more awful yet, and again He selects the rich man (the 
very man, remember, who had enjoyed the best of this 
worlds benefits and who also was kind to the poor 
Lazarus), and yet Christ draws aside the veil of the 
future world, and shows where earthly elevation landed 
him. 

" The rich man died, and was buried ; and in hell 
he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth 
Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he 
cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, 
and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger 
in water, and cool my tongue ; for I am tormented in 
this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that 
thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and 
likewise Lazarus evil things : but now he is comforted, 
and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between 
us and you there is a great gulf fixed : so that they 
which would pass from thence to you cannot ; neither 
can they pass to us, that would come from thence." 

What ! could it be Christ who talked about a man 
in fire, a man crying for a drop of water, and denied 
even this small boon ! Could it be Christ who talked 
about torment, and showed this vision of despair ; the 
tender, loving, merciful Christ ! Ah, He showed it, 
because He saw it ; because this was the real danger, 
from which He had come to deliver ! Because He 
knew that the sick beggar, covered with undressed 
wounds, and with scarce an alleviating circumstance 
to assuage his sufferings, might have the eternal 



74 Popular Christianity. 



compensation which should make his earthly troubles 
seem like a dream, if only his soul was right, if only 
he was " rich towards God/' Christ showed this, 
because it was the one thing which no one else saw. 
The human needs of men were apparent enough to 
many benevolent people in His day, including the rich 
giver who was going to hell, but the crying soul needs, 
which had brought him out of heaven, the hopeless 
woe to which even the rich and happy were drifting — 
the undying worm, the quenchless fire, were the visions 
of sorrow which He only saw, and which His tenderest 
compassion betrayed itself in seeking to relieve. "For 
what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man 
give in exchange for his soul ? " may be taken as 
indicating the foundation principle of His entire scheme 
of redemption. 

Second : Christ's compassion is distinguished from 
all other compassions by its plain, cutting, personal 
dealing. 

"He would eat with sinners/' talk familiarly and 
tenderly with the worst on the earth, and lay His 
hands upon the most loathsome, but He was incap- 
able of dealing lightly with their sin. 

Imagine Christ giving an entertainment, and spend- 
ing the evening in frivolous talk, in order that He 
might humour sinners and attract them to Himself ! 
Imagine Him allowing His little band of disciples to 
sing current songs and read " amusing selections " for 
a couple of hours at a time to keep people out of worse 
company ! No, He was too tenderly compassionate 
for souls, who He knew might end their time on earth 
at any moment, thus to fool away His chance. He 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 75 



never lost an opportunity of talking straight to them 
about their sins, the interests of their souls, and the 
claims of His Father's law. The young ruler comes 
to Him, and he is so lovable, so moral, so good, 
might he not have been allowed to join the little band 
of disciples, and to have gained light gradually ? 
""Yet lackest thou one thing" was pronounced all 
the more clearly because " He loved him." cc Sell 
that thou hast, and follow Me " rang out all the more 
distinctly because He could offer treasures for the 
soul. 

The compassion of Jesus was not of the maudlin 
kind which leaves men their " little indulgences," and 
shrinks from being " too hard " on them, where hard- 
ness is the indispensable condition of salvation. " If 
thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy right eye 
offend thee, pluck it out," He mercilessly prescribes ; 
better, He decides, be maimed and suffering here, than 
be cast into " eternal fire." 

As to the religious ideas of His day, He walked 
straight across them with a cutting "Woe unto you ! " 
Woe ! woe ! was the one cry with which He met the 
teachers and professors of His time, provoking their 
bitterest hate and animosity. "Making clean the 
outside platter, while within are dead men's bones," 
was His short description of them and their doings. 
He upset the nice little fashions which had sprung up 
around the temple worship with a whip of cords. 
" Publicans and harlots shall enter the kingdom 
before you," He told the grand professors who listened 
to Him. He inflicted the faithful wounds of a friend, 
in order that He might awaken them to their danger 
and lead them to seek the only remedy. 



76 



Pop a la r C h ristia n ity . 



Third : Christ's compassion was in direct contrast 
with all mere human benevolence in its " other world- 
lines s." 

No one will dispute that He possessed the power to 
elevate the masses in a temporal sense, bv bestowing 
on them all those benefits at which modern philan- 
thropy aims. He could have fed them by a miracle 
every day, as easily as on the two occasions when He 
multiplied the bread ; and who could have lectured on 
science, or history, or invention, so clearly, so perfectly, 
as He to whom all knowledge must be as an open 
book ? He could have brought into His services 
those twelve legions of angels, and taken an earthly 
kingdom, from which He could have dispensed wealth 
and prosperity to all around; but He indicated His 
scheme for elevating and saving the people when He 
said "I am the Way" — to another sphere, another 
realm, not of earthly good, but of heavenly. When 
He was asked for the posts of honour in His kingdom, 
He made it clear that He was leading to another and 
higher world through a "baptism" and with a "cup" 
of suffering and poverty in this. 

Fourth : Christ's compassion stands out in its 
spiritual fellowsh ip. 

The King of kings makes eternal friends of the 
fishermen. " He did not visit the poor," " He did 
not elevate their sad lot," and walk on in His own 
high path, having His fellowship, His joys, His 
sorrows apart from them ; but He shared His life 
with them in a holy comradeship. He did not live in 
the style and companionship of the worldly Pharisee, 
and occasionally visit Peter, James, and John, and 
hold meetings for the working classes; no, He lived 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 77 

with thern and became education, elevation, salvation, 
and all to them by His blessed fellowship. " Ye are 
my friends," said He, and "all things that I have 
heard of My Father, I have made known unto you." 
His heart had no reserves from these men. John's 
head could lean on His breast, and Mary could sit at 
His feet, with the consciousness that they were taken 
into His confidence, and were indeed as brethren. 

That they could not always understand Him was 
their fault, not His ; but their slowness and dulness 
never wearied His compassion, nor caused Him to seek 
friends elsewhere. He called His three fishermen to 
Him when He was about to put forth any wonderful 
exercise of power. He wanted Peter, James, and John, 
when He was raising the dead, and took them to share 
His joy on the mount of transfiguration. He craved 
for their presence in His last agony, and desired no 
better provision for His mother, when He hung upon 
the cross, than the home that one of them could 
afford. 

Fifth : The compassion of Jesus is yet further dis- 
tinguished by its Divine faith, and hope, and action. 

He had faith in the possibilities of these people, 
which possibilities would not have been very apparent 
to any other eye. He believed in the transforming 
power of the Spirit which He could send them. His 
hope was not chilled by stupidity, or foolishness, or non- 
comprehension on the part of disciples or outsiders. 
Mighty compassion must that have been that could live 
thirty years on such terms with such men, and never 
falter or turn back. Many a fine scheme of modern 
benevolence dies and goes out when the people who are 
to be benefited get to be known ! " Such wretches," 



78 Popular Christianity. 



" so ungrateful/ ' " so presuming/' " so hopeless." 
But Christ hoped all things, believed all things, until 
the Peter who was afraid of a servant girl stood tri- 
umphant before the three thousand converts. Christ 
kept His little band together, although He knew there 
was a traitor amongst them, — the traitor who would 
betray Him, and sell Him for money into the hands of 
His enemies. Christ forbore and worked with John 
until the man who wanted fire from heaven to burn 
up sinners became the apostle of love. Christ made 
the Samaritan harlot woman into His ambassador on 
the spot; Christ made sound men of the lepers, and 
sane divines of the mad. He called the devils out of 
those whom they tormented, and then let loose the 
whole strange flock of ex-harlots, maniacs, and lepers, 
to tell His praises and to gather others to His presence. 
Christ went up to Calvary undismayed by His perfect 
knowledge of sinful, perverse, opposing men, to die for 
the whole ungrateful race. Christ hoped and believed 
in His own blackest hour for the dying blackguard at 
His side, and saved him as he hung there. Talk about 
" eternal hope ! " Is not this the eternal hope which 
saves to the uttermost now and here ? 

Sixth : The compassion of Jesus is further dis- 
tinguished by His ever going straight to the one end. 

The whole work of Christ was aimed at the salvation 
of men's souls. And this is not the less true because 
He also benefited their bodies by healing their dis- 
eases and sympathising with their sorrows. 

This latter side of His work is much dwelt upon in 
these days, and yet it was a merely incidental part. 
If He had come to remove earthly suffering, poverty, 
oppression, and distress, He would, as I have pointed 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ. 79 



out, certainly have gone about it in a different way. 
He would have aimed at riches and position and ease, 
in order that He might have shared them with His 
own chosen ones. He would have sought to build up 
an earthly kingdom, where men should neither hunger 
nor thirst, nor be sick, nor die ; and it would have 
been a far easier task than the founding of that new 
invisible kingdom which we have already tried to 
describe, where only the spiritual and eternal should be 
of much importance. In comparison, how much easier 
to have drawn crowds if He had always given them 
their dinner, than to hold followers who should enter 
into the mysterious doctrine, " I am the Bread of 
life ; " 6C ye must be born again ! " 

But He did feed the multitudes, and He did heal 
the sick ! Yes, but He gave up the former when 
He found that they followed Him for that only, and 
His acts of healing were flashes of the Divine power 
within Him, rather than the u work given Him to do." 
" I came to call sinners to repentance," {{ I am come 
to set the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, 
and a man's foes shall be they of his own household." 
cc I came to bring fire on earth." " I came not to send 
peace, but a sword." These sayings, and multitudes 
of others, were descriptive of a spiritual mission, and 
yet He was most tender, as we readily trace, to every 
suffering, needy creature who came in contact with 
Him. His pity was boundless for the lame, the blind, 
and the deaf, and His loving heart must have grieved 
over much in the sea of human misery brought before 
Him, of which we never hear. The truest love must 
ever seek the highest good of its object, sometimes 
even with forgetfulness of important lesser advantages. 



80 Popular Christianity. 



He gave the great rule by which His compassion for 
men's necessities was guided, when He said, " Seek 
first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; and 
all other things shall be added unto you." 

Seventh : The compassion of Jesus stands out in 
contrast with all other in its devotion unto death. 

He was too merciful to men to spare them the bitter 
truths of hell, or to conceal from them the punishments 
due to transgression ; but on Himself He had no com- 
passion. 

If the penalty was indeed so awful, He would share 
it. He too would bear the curse, the shame, the agony 
of dying for sin, so far as could for the sinless One be 
possible. 

How brightly this compassion shines out against that 
of many who profess so much for the suffering and the 
lost. Watch the people who talk the most loudly of 
their tenderness, and will not say one word of the 
€t outer darkness " and the hell fire of which He said 
so much. Where is there any dying love amongst 
them ? Where are their Calvarys ? Are they remark- 
able for cross bearing ? Are they noted for self-denial, 
or is it in word only, and not in deed, that they are 
more compassionate than Jesus ? They do not like to 
repeat to the poor His terrible words of warning. May 
it not be because they are unwilling to act toward 
the poor as He did ? 

No rough living, no fishermen friends, no hungry, 
weary days, no homeless nights, no persecution and 
contempt — above all, no scourge, no crown of thorns, 
no march up to Golgotha, no nailing to the cross, no 
agony, no dying for the salvation of men ! There can 
be no other dying love than that which causes the 



Sham Compassion and the Love of Christ 81 



real dying. Do settle that in your minds, for without a 
dying, a real, complete, and eternal separation between 
your old self and the new self, which means to live and 
die for others, you cannot be a true disciple of Jesus 
Christ, or an eternal benefactor to your race. You 
may not come to any such terrible end as your Master 
did, for as a rule in outward things the servant is above 
his Lord, but in some way or another you are doubt- 
less called to follow Him in a path full of suffering and 
self-denial, in a road of shame in which you will find 
yourself completely cut off, alas, from the rest of man- 
kind ; but without this daily dying, this true following 
of Him, do not expect to be able to do any lasting 
good to those who are perishing around you. 

Let no benevolent projects, no magnificent phrases 
deceive you. The good done to mankind by the poor 
fishermen who spoke the truth, the whole truth, and no- 
thing but the truth, has surpassed all the achievements 
of modern philanthropy as far as the noon-day sun 
surpasses the rushlight. 

If you want to elevate the masses, go and ask Him 
how to do it, and if the answer comes, " Take up thy 
cross and follow Me/' obey. 




q 



LECTURE IV. 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY: ITS COWARDLY SERVICE 
V. THE REAL WARFARE. 



Popular Christianity : its Cowardly Service 
v. the Real Warfare. 

The subject for this afternoon is The Cowardly Service 
of Popular Christianity in contrast with the Peal War- 
fare which Christ demands of His People. 

I should like to say before I commence, that I hope, 
nay, I believe, that many of my audience will give me 
credit for speaking the truth in love; that although 
some things I may have to say may sound cutting, and 
will be cutting, as all truth when it comes in contact 
with error must be — it would cease to be truth if it 
were not — yet that I do not speak these things cen- 
soriously. If I know anything of my own heart and 
experience, I can say I do not speak these things 
harshly, but painfully and reluctantly. But they have 
been burnt into my soul during twenty-one years of 
public work, by absolute personal contact with the 
evils of which I speak. I have forborne long, hoping 
that some one more able would take up this sword, 
until I sometimes fear that I have been guilty of 
withholding my sword from blood — God knows not 
for my own sake, for since I came to the cruci- 
fixion of myself I have not cared much what men 
might say of me; but I have forborne sometimes 
under a mistaken notion of dealing gently with, and 
of hiding, the sins of professed Christians for fear of 

85 



86 



Popular Christianity : 



hurting the kingdom. But some three or four years 
ago the Lord took me to task, more especially on this 
matter, and showed me that I had no more right to 
palliate a wrong state of things in His professing 
people than in open sinners — that we ought to exa- 
mine ourselves, judge ourselves, and reprove ourselves 
and each other, so that we might redeem His name 
from the awful effects of our inconsistency, and of our 
coming so far short of the standard which Christ has 
set up for us. Therefore what I say this afternoon, 
and in my following lectures, please to bear in mind 
I only say because I must, and because I could not die 
in peace if I had not said it. That I shall be criticised 
and condemned I fully expect, and that in exact pro- 
portion to the force with which the truths shall be 
demonstrated in every man's conscience. But be 
assured that this effort has cost me many a tear and 
prayer, and much thought and self-abandonment. I 
think I can say to those persons here who may be cut 
the most severely, and to those who are not here to 
whom my words refer, I could gladly go down at 
their feet and wash them with my tears, if I could 
thus bring about a better state of things. 

I want to remark first, that Jesus Christ came to 
establish the kingdom of God upon the earth; that 
He intended this kingdom to be a literal kingdom, 
that is, as truly a kingdom as any of the kingdoms of 
this world; that He intended it to be a holy kingdom, 
a kingdom of righteousness, and consequently separate 
from, and above, all other kingdoms; that Christ 
continually spoke of His followers as a community, 
existing in the midst of another kingdom or com- 
munity, having its own laws and principles and aims 



Its Coivardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 87 



entirely distinct and separate from the world. He 
not only made it separate, but He ordained that it 
should be kept separate, and. He did not fail to give 
the most emphatic cautions and prohibitions against 
any amalgamation whatever between the forces of His 
kingdom and the forces of the kingdom of Satan, in 
the midst of which His kingdom was established. 

Further, He put forth the claim, as the King and 
Sovereign of this kingdom, to the highest affection, 
allegiance, and homage of the hearts of His subjects, 
representing Himself as a King in a sense entirely 
beyond and above all earthly sovereigns. He repre- 
sented Himself as reigning, not by virtue of outward 
power, but by virtue of the inward love, devotion, and 
adoration of His subjects; and thus more perfectly 
and completely over their outward lives than any 
earthly king could pretend to do. 

Further, the avowed purpose of Jesus Christ was to 
propagate and extend this kingdom over the whole 
earth . 

In this respect only was He the originator of a new 
dispensation, for God had already a kingdom in the 
earth, although it was of a national and sectarian 
character. Jesus Christ came to break down the walls 
of partition between Jew and Gentile, and to let out, 
so to speak, the mercy, goodness, and grace of God to 
the whole race. Henceforth there was to be 66 neither 
Greek nor Jew, . . . barbarian, Scythian, bond 
nor free ; but Christ is all, and in all.*" 

But as in Adam all had died, so in Christ should all 
be made alive; as all men had lost their souls in 
Adam, so all should have the opportunity, subject to 
that free choice without which either salvation or 



88 Popular Christianity : 



damnation would be a mere figure of speech, and 
without which a man would be no more capable of 
salvation than an ox,— subject only to such choice 
every son and daughter of Adam should have the 
provision in Christ of eternal salvation. 

Then, further, Jesus Christ ordained and arranged 
that this kingdom of His should be propagated in the 
world by human instrumentality. Why, we do not 
know. There might be many reasons, but the main 
one probably was that the human being, himself trans- 
formed, restored to God and to His image, and inspired 
with His love, would be the most effectual ambassador 
that God could send. 

Another reason might be that Christ chose to put 
this honour on His own brethren after the Spirit — 
those whom He has redeemed from amongst men, and 
who have chosen Him as their Sovereign, with His 
cross and its consequences, in preference to the 
pleasures, riches, or honours of this world. 

Or, third, it might be that no other instrumentality 
would be so calculated to bring glory to His Father, 
the weakness of the human agent exhibiting most 
perfectly the excellency of the Divine power. 

Note further, that the establishment of this kingdom 
over all the earth means, of course, resistance and 
opposition from those nations already in possession. 

And here is a wonderful analogy between the estab- 
lishment of the kingdom of Christ and the subjugation 
of Canaan to the Israelites. God had promised that 
land to Abraham long years before, and spoke of it as 
already belonging to his descendants ; nevertheless 
they had to go and conquer it in His strength. So 
God has given the kingdoms of this earth to His Son. 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 89 

In the end the kingdoms of this world are to become 
the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ ; but we 
have to go and conquer them, just as the Israelites 
had to conquer Canaan, in the faith, and by the 
strength, of our God. It has only been for want of 
faith that the world has not been conquered long ago. 
Oh, what a delusion many Christians labour under 
with respect to the extension of the kingdom of God ! 
They have a notion that the kingdom is to take the 
world by stealth ; that men are to be turned to God 
without any connection of means with the event ; that 
it is going to be done by a sort of internal miracle, and 
the Church has been waiting for this miracle for 1800 
years. Consequently the work is not done, because 
this notion is in direct opposition to the orders and 
ordination of the King. If ever the world is subdued, 
it will be by His servants carrying out their Lord's 
instructions, and setting themselves to subdue it. It 
will be by bringing all the wisdom, skill, and force of 
their humanity, allied with divinity, as the early dis- 
ciples did, and turning that force upon the rebel 
world. It will be done by hard, desperate fighting, if 
the great fundamental principles laid down in this 
Bible are to be relied on, and in no other way, because 
the nations in possession will never let you subdue 
them and take them for God without opposition. 
Christ systematically foretold and depicted this oppo- 
sition, and gave His disciples to understand that they 
would have to wage wae with all the power of those 
who were possessed of evil, and who were profiting by 
evil, and that it would be no easy conquest. 

He told them they would have to go and subdue 
this evil by good, this unrighteousness by righteous- 



90 Popular Christianity : 



ness. The spirit of the devil wo aid have to be driven 
out of man by the power of the Spirit of God dwelling 
in them. This He taught as plainly and persistently 
as He taught anything. If we wanted an illustration 
of the continuance of this spirit of opposition in the 
earth, we might find it in the events that have lately 
transpired in Switzerland. A little force of godly 
people, without any of the peculiarities about which 
there has been such a hue and cry in England, without 
an instrument of music, without a banner or flag, or 
procession, or open-air service, without even a uniform, 
had only to commence to live Jesus Christ over again, 
and to carry out His orders in thrusting His claims 
on their fellow-men, when wicked rulers combined 
with those who profit by the vilest kinds of vice to 
mob them, drive them out, put them down, or kill 
them, as the case might be. Why ? Because the 
instinct of the evil one recognised the Spirit of Jesus 
Christ. The devil always knows where the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ is, and he knows something else ; he 
knows where it is not, and where it is not he lets 
well alone ! 

" Ok ! ;; people say, "the world is different in these 
days from what it was in the days of Jesus Christ and 
Paul/'' Is it ? Try it on the same lines, and you 
will soon find out how far different it is. The very 
essence of the spirit of evil is antagonistic to the spirit 
of good. Good and evil are as diametrically opposed 
to each other as ever; therefore they can never be 
brought into contact without conflict, without war, and 
sometimes of the most deadly kind, ending in the death 
and martyrdom of the saints. I was amused with the 
exemplification of this some weeks ago. As one of our 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Beat Warfare. 91 

female officers was walking up Clapton, a band of lads 
were hooting after her, " Hallelujah ! " " Jesus 
Christ ! " " Salvation ! " and other beautiful names ; 
for in whatever voice they be hissed out, they cannot 
make such words ugly. They were hissing these names 
after her as she walked meekly and quietly along. At 
length she turned suddenly to them and said, " What 
are you doing this for ? I have never done you any 
harm. I am walking peaceably along the road ; why 
are you shouting after me ? " They were all so taken 
aback that they stood breathless for a moment, then 
one of them, I suppose a little bolder than the rest, 
and at least an honest lad, said, u It is because you are 
good and we are bad." Ah ! that was the truth for 
once. That was the expression, in his rough way, of 
the eternal principle, that there must be conflict be- 
tween good and evil ; and the greater good you bring 
in conflict with evil, the more the evil will rage and try 
for the mastery. Hence, the world treated Him who 
was the very personification of the Father's holiness, 
worse than it ever treated any other human being, be- 
cause He was the concentration of goodness, and there- 
fore the devil did his worst on Him ; and just as we 
approximate to His character will the devil do his 
worst on us. 

Further, Christ taught His soldiers to expect the 
opposition of devils. 

I suppose most of you believe in evil spirits who 
have access to the human mind. I wish, if you do not, 
you could have some of the experience of the Salva- 
tion Army • I think you would then. If there are evil 
spirits, if they have access to this world, and if they 
are interested in circumventing the plans of God, it 



92 Popular Christianity]: 



only stands to sense that they should influence their 
servants to fight in opposition to the servants of God. 
This opposition was foretold by Christ, and His ser- 
vants were warned against it, and provided for it. He 
said to His apostles when He commissioned them, 
"Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves, 
but lo, I am with you always." And again to Paul, 
I will be with thee, " delivering thee from the people, 
and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee." 
Why? Because He knew the opposition which their 
mission would provoke. He said, " Think not that I 
am come to send peace on earth : I came not to send 
peace, but a sword." Wherever the true Christ 
appears, there must the sword come to the dividing 
asunder of everything evil, and there must also come 
the sword of provocation. Even the nearest and 
dearest relatives rise up to persecute those who truly 
follow the Christ. This must continue to be so while 
good and evil continue in contact, and the fact that 
modern Christianity has ceased, as a rule, to provoke 
opposition, is one of the deadliest signs of its effete- 
ness. As a rule, the world and modern Christianity 
go comfortably on together. They are so actuated by 
one common principle, and walk so amicably on one 
common pathway, that you see very little collision 
between them. The world has very little to complain 
of, and so it lets them alone. May God help, and 
quickly mend or end it. 

Further, I want you to note, that, notwithstanding 
all the danger involved in this deadly warfare, which 
Jesus Christ represented it to be, — for He did not 
deceive them, but told them plainly that all men would 
hate them, that they would probably have to follow 



Its Coivardly Service v. the Real Warfare, 93 



Him to martyrdom and death, — nevertheless, they ac- 
cepted the mission. I grant that they were a little 
time in coming to comprehend it ; I grant that it took 
some time to free them from their national and sec- 
tarian prejudices. Peter had to receive his lesson 
through the vision of the sheet let down from heaven, 
before he understood the true genus of his mission. 
But when he and the other apostles did comprehend 
it, — and that was the difference between them and 
modern apostles, — when they saw the work to which 
the Master called them, they joyfully embraced it. 
They did not stop to confer with flesh and blood, or to 
reason what it would cost them, to ask about salaries, 
or houses, or friends ; they embraced the mission and 
went, and carried it out with their lives in their hands ; 
and oh, how magnificently they succeeded ! What a 
large portion of the world they subdued in comparison 
with their numbers and facilities, for, remember, there 
were no railways in those days to speed them from 
town to town, and city to city; there were no tele- 
graphs to fly before them with their announcements ; 
no printing presses to herald their coming with posters 
and handbills and all manner of notices : they had 
none of the facilities which we possess in these days 
for quickening their speed, or how gladly would they 
have availed themselves of them ! What gigantic suc- 
cess they attained, because they carried out their 
mission on the lines which J esus Christ had laid down. 
Is it not true that just in proportion as their successors 
have followed in their steps, they have been successful 
in propagating the gospel ? We all know that the 
stars in the heavenly firmament, the men and women 
whose names stand out with extra brilliancy on the 



94 



Popular Christianity : 



page of history, as having been successful in pushing 
this glorious warfare, have been the men and women 
who took their lives in their hands, and followed their 
Master without respect to consequences ; who came 
out straight and clear from the vjorld and set them- 
selves to their work, irrespective of what men might 
say or do to them. And we know what mighty con- 
quests some of them achieved, and therefore we may 
reason that if all Christ's professed disciples had fol- 
lowed in the same track, a million times greater 
results would have been attained. 

Let me put a practical question here. How many 
are there here who have comprehended the task ? 
How many are there to whom the Spirit of God has 
said in unmistakable language, " Come out from 
amongst the ungodly or the half-hearted, and be 
separate, and I will touch your lips with a live coal 
from off My altar, and will make you fishers of men " ? 
Did you embrace the mission ? Have you gone forth 
following your Master, carrying His cross and seeking 
the souls of men ? If not, what will you say to Him 
in the great day of account ? 

Further, in looking at the requirements of the King, 
and at the history of the early apostles and disciples, 
I charge it on modern Christianity, that its professors 
do not even comprehend the first principles of this war- 
fare, much less do they set themselves to carry it on to 
the ends of the earth. 

The service rendered to the King and to the king- 
dom in these days is, alas, with few exceptions, of a 
very milk- and- watery type, of a very short- weight 
character, and the great effort of the majority of its 
teachers, judging from their writings, and from what 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 95 



we see and know of their public services and of their 
private lives, seems to be intended to make things 
comfortable all round. " Peace, peace/' is the con- 
tinual cry, when there is no peace. As one of the 
bishops said a little while ago, " We hear a great deal 
about Church defence; we ought to be hearing about 
Church aggression." Yes, alas ! in the great mass 
of instances when these modern Christians do fight, it 
is over opinions and ceremonies with their own chil- 
dren, inside their own walls, instead of with the enemy 
outside. They are far more valiant in defending some 
ceremonial of the Church, than they are in defending 
the cross of Christ in the presence of its adversaries. 
They are far more concerned in propagating their 
" ism " than the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and 
joy in the Holy Ghost. Alas, that it should be so ; 
but such is the fact, and it is patent to every enlight- 
ened observer. • 

Jesus Christ did not call us to fight each other, but 
He called us to present one bold front to the enemy. 
He bade us go and take captive the hearts and souls 
of men, and not merely to change their opinions. Get 
a man's heart right, and *his opinions will soon follow. 
But you may be tinkering at his intellect till the hour 
of his death, and he will not be a whit nearer heaven, 
but perchance nearer hell, than if he had been let 
alone. 

Further, these modern Christians, as a rule, do not 
see any need for the fight. 

They hide themselves under some vain, false notions 
of the sovereignty of God. Oh, how often they have 
made my heart ache when I have been trying to 
arouse them to do something for the kingdom. They 



96 Popular Christianity : 



say, " God is a sovereign, and He will accomplish His 
purposes out of all this sin and ruin ; " and so they sit 
comfortably down and let things drift ; and they have 
drifted to some purpose, have they not ? In this so- 
called Christian country, in this nineteenth century, 
they have drifted to about as near perdition as they 
well could, without absolutely bringing hell on the 
earth. They have drifted socially as well as spirit- 
ually. Look at the state of the nation. Look at 
the godlessness, the injustice, the falseness, the blas- 
phemy, the uncleanness and the debauchery every- 
where ! Do you ever look at the condition of things 
close to your doors and your churches ? the worse 
than heathen beastliness into which thousands of our 
neglected neighbours, rich and poor alike, have sunk ? 
If only half the professing Christians of London had 
followed in their Master's steps for one twelve months, 
such things would have been impossible, utterly im- 
possible ! 

I repeat, Jesus Christ has ordained and provided 
that His people are to set themselves to stem these 
torrents of moral and social pollution ; they are to go 
and beard the lion in his den ; to face the slaves of sin, 
open their eyes, and bring them down to His feet, just 
as much as were His early followers; and never till 
we do it shall we realize a better state of things. All 
the legislation, education, or provision of better dwell- 
ings, as I shall hereafter try to demonstrate, won't 
touch the moral cancer, the spring of all this wicked- 
ness and misery; nothing will do it until the Chris- 
tians rise up to do their Master's bidding. But I say, 
they do not see any need for it, and they try to quiet 
us who do. You have to prove, and argue, and drive, 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Beat Warfare. 97 

and almost show them damnation before you can get 
a bit of service of any sort out of them. They have 
no heart for the fight. They do not feel these things. 
As God said of the fallen and false prophets of the 
Jews, " They lay not these things to their hearts." 
They lay their own business to their hearts. You see 
it depicted on the countenances of these Christian men 
if the balance is on the wrong side; if bankruptcy 
stares them in the face, you soon find that out. These 
Christian women lay the welfare of their own families 
to their hearts ; you soon find out when a child is sick, 
or in any kind of disgrace or danger. But these same 
men and women can walk about the walls and see 
the desolations of Zion without any of these marks of 
distress or apprehension, without any such tears or 
groans. 

They will manifest more anger against the people 
who urge them to fight, than they will against the 
enemy. A great many of them hate the Salvation 
Army for this more than for any other thing. They 
say, "You are always at us: let us alone, we want 
peace." They want to be quiet and comfortable, and 
to have their religion in a snug, back-parlour fashion. 
Fight ! they hate the name of fighting. Going out 
to face a mob ! oh dear no, that is out of all question. 
How could you ever think of such a thing*. Being 
mocked, and spit upon, and kicked, and buffetted, and 
perchance killed for Christ ! they would think you 
were clean gone mad. Some of these modern Chris- 
tians have tried to put two or three of our people into 
asylums for nothing else. The moment anybody at- 
tempts really to obey Jesus Christ, they cry, " Mad ! 
mad ! away with such a fellow ; he is not fit to live." 

H 



98 



l opular Christianity : 



What a veritable laughing-stock to hell such professed 
Christians make themselves. The devil says, " All 
right ; let them alone. Let them go to their sanc- 
tuaries, let them have their creeds and ceremonies, let 
them sing their sweet hymns, and amuse themselves 
with their religious entertainments and their Bible 
classes; do not disturb them whatever you do, they 
are amongst my best and most successful allies."" Oh, 
may God show us these things, and help us to set to 
work to awaken every backslidden, lazy professor 
within reach of us. 

Many of these latter day Christians are most zealous 
in building the sepulchres of the prophets, that is, of the 
saints— the spiritual warriors of bygone times. They 
are often great at lectures on these ancient worthies — 
Luther, George Fox, Wesley, and others, and they 
will listen most interestedly to a dissertation on their 
heroism, just as they would listen to a lecture on 
Shakespeare or Milton ; but as to imitating their deeds 
of valour, it never enters their minds any more than 
if they had been inhabitants of another sphere. They 
simply go, in the great mass of instances, to have their 
intellects amused, their feelings tickled. It never 
dawns on them that they are to go and imitate the 
example of these heroes. They do not perceive that 
it ought equally to be the absorbing interest of their 
own lives, and that they are equally called to brave 
men and devils in propagating the kingdom of Christ 
in the earth. They go home and live the coming week 
exactly as they lived the week that preceded it. They 
admire the men who laid down their lives for the King 
a hundred or three hundred years ago, and will per- 
haps put up a monument to their memory, but as to 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 99 



doing so themselves, or allowing themselves to come 
into the same circumstances of persecution, they would 
sooner almost go to hell. I speak the things I know 
and have witnessed till my heart is sick. 

Further, I charge it on popular Christianity that 
its professors are ashamed of their colours in the pre- 
sence of the enemy. 

They shrink from any open, straightforward con- 
fession of Christ before men. I maintain that it is 
not confessing Him to go to church or chapel once a 
week amongst those who go the same way with you. 
They do not confess Him on the exchange, in the 
bank, or in the streets of the city. Where do you 
see any one, or only one in a million, who comes out 
with any thorough- going, straightforward confession 
of Christ before the world ? Where ? There are a 
few Roman Catholic or high Church monastics, and 
whatever I may think of their errors and their mum- 
meries, I always feel a measure of reverence when I 
pass them. I feel there is a man or woman who is 
willing to acknowledge his God before men, and who 
is not ashamed to come out and condemn the world, 
by being separate from it, and entering a protest 
against its fashions and its follies. 

How many professing Christians are there of this 
day who would go through the city of London in any 
attire, or with any kind of badge, that said to men 
and women, "I am a saint and a soldier of Jesus 
Christ " ? And yet the soldiers of the queen are proud 
to do this in an enemy 's country ! I repeat, who is 
there that dare do it for Christ, except we fanatics 
of the Salvation Army ? 

I understand that a popular minister said the other 



100 Popular Christianity : 



day, speaking of the Salvation Army, that we were 
" playing at soldiers ! " I will engage to say that if 
that minister will come with us for a single day, we 
will give him such a dose of fighting as he never had 
in his life before. We will send him home at night 
quite convinced that it is no playing at soldiers on our 
part. If he does not get his head broken, we will 
guarantee that his coat will be torn, or covered with 
mud or ochre, or something worse ! 

Playing at soldiers indeed ! let him doff his kid 
gloves, his gentleman's attire, and lay aside his cigar, 
and come with our lasses into the public-houses with 
the War Cry or a Bible under his arm, or anything 
else that tells the inmates what he has come for, and 
he will find out whether we are playing at soldiers or 
not ! I would like to put that man alongside one of 
our dear little female captains in a certain jail just now, 
and see whether such an experience, even for twenty- 
four hours, would not change his opinion. Such cruel 
stabs from professed Christian ministers are worse than 
the cruel mockings and scourgings of the enemy. 
" May the Lord not lay this sin to their charge." But 
to return to this shame-facedness in the Master's cause : 
it is time we had done with it; it is time we pro- 
claimed ourselves ; for we speak to numbers by our 
appearance to whom we can never speak by our words, 
and unless we confess Christ in our appearance in such 
instances, we cannot confess Him at all. Besides, 
why should we be ashamed of it ? Why ? The other 
day when I was driving through a low thoroughfare of 
London, and the little urchins were crying after me, 
one " Jesus ! another, " Hallelujah ! " and a third, 
" There goes the Salvation Army ! " I felt my soul 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 101 



glow with holy joy as I thought of the words, " The re- 
proaches of them that reproached Thee fell on me/' 

I do not care what kind of a garb or a badge you 
wear, — that is not the point, but there ought to be a 
badge which says to every man and woman, " I belong- 
to Jesus Christ, and I am not ashamed of my colours."" 

Any profession of Jesus Christ which brings no cross 
is all nonsense ; it is not confession at all. There are 
plenty of Christians very brave inside their churches 
in the presence of their friends, or on parade. They 
sing :— 

*' Am 1 a soldier ot' the cross ? " 

or, 

" Hold the fort, for I am coming.'* 

I was once in a large congregation where they were 
singing this with the greatest gusto : — 

" Wave the answer back to heaven. 
1 By Thy grace we will. ' " 

I was sitting beside a warrior of the cross, one who 
carried the marks of many a desperate battle on his 
worn face. I whispered, " What should you think this 
people's conception of holding the fort is ? 99 and he 
whispered back, " A seven-and- sixpenny pew ! 99 Alas, 
how true, in hundreds of instances. Are there any 
ministers here ? If so, I ask you, Is it not true of 
three parts of your congregations ? What do the 
people in your pews mean by holding the fort? What 
fort do they hold ? They hold the fort valiantly on 
the stock exchange, in the bank, at the office, or 
behind the counter. Let anybody go and try to 
get the better of them there, and they will hold that 



102 Popular Christianity : 



fort valiantly enough ; but what fort are they holding 
for Jesus Christ ? Here are two men, one is a profess- 
ing Christian, the other an honourable man of the 
world. They are both, we will suppose, in the same 
business. Take their lives from day to day, and what 
is the difference between them ? The one goes to 
church or chapel once or twice on Sunday. On the 
week day he gets up in the morning and has his 
breakfast, and perhaps he reads prayers out of a book, 
or perhaps not ; this done and away he rushes to the 
city, to the business, where he works and thinks and 
plans with untiring energy till evening to make money. 
This is what he does six days in the week, without 
giving one hour per day to any kind of service to God 
or humanity, or even to the affairs of his own or his 
children's souls. The other man does just the same, 
only he does not go to church on Sunday, or read 
prayers. If you look into the lives of these two men 
at the end of the week, you can't find that the pro- 
fessed Christian has done one iota for the kingdom of 
God more than the other. Tou can't find that he has 
spoken to any one about his soul : he would think it 
out of season to talk about religion in the shop, the 
counting house, or on the exchange. He has never 
button-holed any of his acquaintances or friends in his 
own house ; he has never knelt down by the side of 
any poor wandering brother or sister, never visited 
any sick one or prayed with the dying ; he has not 
done a thing for the Lord Jesus, and yet he will go to 
chapel and sing, " Hold the fort " on Sunday, as 
though he had been living the life of a saint all the 
week. I ask, Why should such a man be called a 
Christian any more than his neighbour over the way ? 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 103 



Oh, friends, it is time we wiped away this reproach, and 
put it out of the power of infidels and atheists to wag 
their heads and say, " What do ye more than others ? " 
It is time we drummed out of the professed armies of 
our Lord all such renegades or hypocrites ! 

Further, the great mass of these modern Christians 
cannot enter into this fight because they refuse to 

BEAR THE CONSEQUENCES. 

Fighting is hard work, whatever sort of fighting it 
is. You cannot fight without wounds of body, heart, 
or soul. You cannot be a soldier without enduring 
"hardness " and genteel Christians don't like hard- 
ness — they won't have the consequences. 

First, they won't lose their reputation; they won't 
be counted fools and fanatics. I was thinking the 
other day, if we could have a list of the names of 
every person, high and low, rich and poor, who has 
ever been to the meetings of the Salvation Army, and 
who has received light and truth, and been called 
and claimed by God for this war, but who has gone 
back into the wilderness, what a list that would be ! 
And more than half of this drawing back has been 
because people have been ashamed to own where they 
got their blessing, or where they might have had it. 
Friends, the recording angel keeps such a list ! A 
gentleman answered the other day, when bewailing 
his miserable spiritual condition, and one of our 
friends asked him to go to a holiness meeting, " Not 
in my own town" If he had been in London, and 
could have crept in with the crowd into the great 
Congress Hall, where nobody would have recognised 
him, he would have gone, but not in his own town. 
That reveals the secret of thousands of people having 



104 Popular Christianity. 



resisted the light, and lost the blessing they might 
have had. It was the same spirit of false shame which 
prompted the question of the Pharisees, " Have any 
of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him ? " 

My brother, my sister, listen : — while you care 
what any man or woman on earth thinks about you, 
or the instruments used of God to bless you, never 
expect to keep your blessing, for you never will. That 
man will go blundering on in his present lean and 
skeleton condition to the grave, and probably into 
hell, unless he repents, and finds out his mistake, and 
does his first works. Ashamed ! — Won't be thought 
fanatical or weak, won't be mixed up with these 
common people. "Not in my own town, not in my 
own family/' — too proud to confess that I am . not 
just what I should be, and that I am going amongst 
those poor people to be made better. Oh, dear no, 
not if heaven depended upon it. Listen ! " Whoso- 
ever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My 
words, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, 
when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the 
holy angels." 

Then, further, these modern Christians refuse to 
give their substance to carry on the war. 

You see war is impossible without money. I wish 
it were not so, but I cannot help it. This war is as 
impossible as any other, without money. Men and 
women must eat to live, however little they may 
manage with. And travelling expenses, rent of build- 
ings, announcements, working expenses, prosecutions, 
breakdowns through sickness, etc., etc., must be met. 
This war, I say, must have money, and the more wak 
the more money is wanted. How many of these 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Beat Warfare. 105 



mongrel Christians, when faced with the needs of the 
war-chest, exclaim, " Money again ! always begging." 
Now contrast the feelings of these same people when 
there is any great popular national war on foot. 
Then, what do they say in their newspapers, in their 
public meetings ? They say to their statesmen : " You 
must ask for grants; you must not stick fast for 
money. We must win. John Bull must not be 
beaten for the sake of a few millions ! " Ah, ah ! 
their hearts are in this warfare ! The women would 
sell their ornaments, and the men would hand over 
their balances, rather than England's freedom or 
greatness should be sacrificed. Now then, I say that 
if the Christians of this London and this England of 
ours had the true war spirit, the spirit which says, " I 
want the world for Christ Jesus : I want my King to 
reign over the hearts of men : He shall win, be it at 
the cost of money or blood, or all else," — if this spirit 
possessed them, instead of begrudging and reckoning 
how little they could give, and how much would save 
appearances, they would try how far they could deny 
themselves, and how much they could give. Oh ! is 
this not true ? Can you contradict it ? Then, what 
am I to think of a band of professed soldiers who are 
always grumbling about having to give their money 
to extend the reign of their king, whom they profess 
to love more than all else besides ! I do not propose 
to dwell on the beggarly subterfuges for getting 
money which these Christians resort to; it would 
make my cheeks crimson with shame. I said to a 
lady a little while ago, who was working an elaborate 
piece of embroidery for a bazaar, ""Why don't you 
give the money, and use your time for something 



106 Popular Christianity : 



better ? " She answered, " This will sell for more 
than it costs." "Then reckon what it will sell for, 
and give the money ; don't sit at home making 
other people's finery, instead of visiting the sick and 
seeking to save the lost ! " It makes me burn with 
shame to think how money is raised for so-called 
religious purposes by semi-worldly concerts, enter- 
tainments, penny readings, and baazars, at which 
there is frequently positive gambling to raise money 
for Jesus Christ, whom they say they love more than 
fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, houses or lands, 
or anything else on earth ! And these are the people 
who accuse the Salvation Army of want of reverence ! 
I have sometimes talked to ladies when they have 
been expensively dressed, and they have said, "Really, 
I do not care for these things." " Then," I have said, 
" it is passing strange you should be willing to spend 
your money for them. People generally care for the 
things they pay for." If Christians really cared for the 
reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men, if their 
hearts were set on His kingdom and on doiug all they 
possibly could to extend it, if it were the highest 
ambition of their souls, the waking and sleeping idea 
of their minds, do you think they would grudge to 
pay for it ? Oh no ; any child knows they would nob. 
Such professed concern is a mockery ! 

Further, these modern Christians refuse to give 
themselves or their children to the propagation of the 
kingdom. 

They studiously bring up their children from three 
or four years of age to eighteen or twenty, grinding it 
into them every day of their lives, for six and eight 
hoars a day, how to get on and up in this world ; but 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 107 

when Jesus Christ wants one of them — especially if he 
or she happens to be clever — to do any unpopular, or, 
in the eyes of the world, vulgar work for Him — any 
work that will bring a cross — they consider it abso- 
lutely throwing that child away. All the ordinary silly, 
sickly circles of gossip, and croquet, and drawing-room 
occupations, are considered most respectable and 
satisfactory in the case of young girls, alongside of 
any one of them giving herself up to seek and to save 
the lost. I heard a young lady say of a large circle of 
Christian friends : " While I was in frivolity and sin 
they all let me alone ; I never had a letter, that I 
remember, from any of them about my soul ; but as 
soon as they found that I had given myself to work 
amongst the poor and the lost, then they all woke up 
to a deep concern about my future, and I was flooded 
with letters from these Christian friends ! " Oh ! 
what do you think Jesus Christ would say to such 
people ? Would He not say, as He said of their 
representatives, the Pharisees, "Well hath Esaias 
prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This 
people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart 
is far from Me." Why should that daughter be 
thought thrown away who comes out and chooses a 
voluntary poverty and humility, and becomes a salva- 
tion officer to win poor lost men and women, for whom 
you say Jesus Christ shed His blood ? If they were 
worth His blood, surely they are worth your daughter's 
respectability ! Then why, because she chooses to 
sacrifice it, should she be put at a disadvantage com- 
pared with her elder or younger sisters, who spend their 
time in the frivolities of the world ? Answer all ye 
parents, professed followers of the despised Nazareue ! 



108 



Popular Christianity : 



Oh, the stories I could unfold, the dozens of letters 
that could be produced, pleading with young men and 
women whose hearts God has touched with pity for 
the perishing multitudes ; bringing all the considera- 
tions of family ties, worldly position, future prospects, 
wealthy alliances, and I know not what else, in order 
to induce them to turn aside from the path of self- 
sacrifice and whole-hearted abandonment to the 
interests of the kingdom. I sometimes wonder that 
Christian parents and friends dare utter such words or 
pen such letters. I wonder that the ink does not turn 
red as they write, and that their accusing consciences 
do not force them to sign their letters " Judas." 

What a different spirit parents and friends manifest 
with respect to their children and wards when the 
war-fever seizes the nation ! Mothers give their sons 
— it may be with tears and heartaches — nevertheless 
ungrudgingly, to face the horrors of foreign warfare, 
in the shape of loneliness, toil, long marchings, ex- 
posure, privation, fever, dysentery, and a desolate 
death; and in other instances to wounds, loss of limbs, 
enfeebled constitutions, or violent death. Nay, women 
themselves have gone to such a war with the bravery 
of men, making lint, nursing the wounded, and in- 
spiring the weak or wavering, and even working the 
guns ; and as one rank has fallen, others have rushed 
in to fill up the bleeding gaps. But is it so in this 
warfare ? It used to be. No grander enthusiasm, 
no more heroic self-sacrifice, no more determined 
abandonment, has ever fired human souls than has 
been exhibited in the cause of Jesus Christ ; but alas ! 
it is a long while ago. The Christians of this age, as 
a rule, want all their time, strength, and ability, and 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 109 



that of their children also, to enable them to climb 
up the ladder of this world's social position; to get 
up, up, from whence God — if Christ's teaching means 
anything — will say, " Thou fool ! " and hurl them down 
to perdition when they have done. 

Friends, is it not true? If so, we ought to go 
down on our faces and weep, and have a confession 
service— first, for those who feel that this truth applies 
to themselves ; and second, for those who, although 
their own consciences acquit them, know that it 
applies to thousands round about us. Like the pro- 
phets of old did, let us humble ourselves for the sins 
of our people. Let us take their iniquities on our 
hearts as far as we may, weep over them, confess for 
them, and pray for them, and then set ourselves to 
try to arouse them up to a sense of their responsibility 
and danger. 

Further, I charge it on the professors of popular 
Christianity that they have no valour in the fight for 
truth and for God. 

They hold not fast the faith once delivered to the 
saints, but surrender first one point and. then another 
of God's revelation to any sceptical heathen who may 
see fit to attack it. They bid God speed, alike to all 
professed prophets and creeds, simply because it is a 
matter of indifference with them whether truth or 
error shall prevail; in fact, they are most tolerant 
of false teachers because they propound the easiest 
doctrine, often patronising the most monstrous con- 
tradictions and shameless caricatures of the gospel. 
There can be. no doubt that millions of souls are being- 
sacrificed to the godless, senseless antinomian gospels 
of the present day, gospels which have been hacked 



and hewed worse than any poor vivisected animal. 
The very standards and landmarks of goodness, truth, 
honesty, chastity, and godliness are broken down, and 
the people are taught that they have nothing to do, to 
sacrifice, or to suffer, in order to be saved and to get 
into heaven ; in fact, that they can get there as easily 
by the broad road as by the narrow way ; and all who 
preach the truth as Christ preached it are stigmatized 
as legal — as workmongers, as antichrists and papists. 

Further, these modern Christians lack all enthusiasm 
in the warfare. 

Look at their poor, gasping, half-hearted, uncertain 
profession of personal religion. They condemn any- 
body who dares get up and tell out any definite 
change that God has wrought in them, or of any 
glowing experience of the love, sufficiency, and power 
of Christ to save. They characterise all such testi- 
mony as self-exaltation and vainglory, whereas they 
ought to know that one of the main purposes of 
Christ in establishing a kingdom on the earth was 
tha.t His servants might be His witnesses — not wit- 
nesses merely of His existence, but of His power to 
save from sin and its consequences. They should also 
study the writings of Paul, whom they claim as their 
great apostle, and note his bold, comprehensive, and 
persistent expression of his own personal experience, 
which occupies so large a share of his epistles. 

Look at the cold, stiff, stilted public service of these 
modern Christians; note how they pray, sitting 
looking about, without reverence or decency, while 
their ministers pray for them by proxy ; listen to their 
songs, mostly sung by a few dressed-up dolls perched 
in an organ-loft or singing-pew, doing their praises for 



Its Coivardly Service 0. the Beat Warfare. Ill 

them, perhaps with a profane or drunken leader at so 
much a year. Listen to the preaching, — as a rule, cold 
dissertations and abstractions or platitudes, "moving 
not a hair of the polished divine 99 who utters them, 
nor of the people who listen. An amen or hallelujah 
would sound almost as much out of place as it would 
be on the gallows ! Who would ever imagine that 
such a minister and such worshippers were professedly 
serving Him of whom it was said, " He shall baptize 
you with the Holy Ghost and with fire 99 ? Alas, alas ! 
such worshippers have nothing to be enthusiastic 
about. They have no personal participation in the 
Spirit or purposes of their professed Lord, no realiza- 
ation of His presence, and no glowing anticipation of 
His predicted triumphs. But watch the change when 
the time for dismissal comes ; see the rush of acquaint- 
ances at the church or chapel doors to shake hands 
with one another ; listen to the rush of tongues ; — there 
is plenty of enthusiasm now ! Frank's , prizes at 
school or honours at college, Harry's promotion in the 
killing army, Gertrude's recent engagement, or Lizzie's 
new baby, — these are topics in" which the heart is 
interested, and so the tongue is inspired, and the soul 
comes forth from its lethargy ! Alas for the little 
children who watch the altered countenances and listen 
to the interested tone and manner of mother and 
father during the progress of these congratulations ! 
No wonder if they conclude that this is the reality, 
and what they have been witnessing in the church 
or chapel is a sham. No wonder such a Christianity 
cannot hold its own against the forces of the enemy; 
no cause is so hopeless as one without enthusiasm. 
People who do not care much are sure to go to the wall. 



112 Popular Christianity : 



Further, I charge these modern Christians with 
a lack of missionary enterprise. 

No wonder, if they reason from the value and effect 
of their religion on their own characters and lives, 
that they do not see the importance of sending it to 
the heathen; and from all accounts it does no more 
for the heathen abroad than for the Christians at 
home. Alas, alas ! on all these points popular Chris- 
tianity must be confessed, when weighed in the 
balances of the sanctuary, to be found lamentably 
wanting. 

Friends, what about yours ? 

The Real Warfare. 

We will now glance at two or three of the main 
characteristics of that warfare to which Christ has 
called His soldiers. 

First: Christ's soldiers must be imbued with the 
spirit of the war. 

Love to the King and concern for His interests 
must be the master passion of the soul. All outward 
effort, even that which springs from a sense of duty, 
will fail without this. The hardship and suffering 
involved in real spiritual warfare are too great for 
any motive but that of love. It is said that one of 
the soldiers of Napoleon, when being operated upon 
for the extraction of a bullet, exclaimed, " Cut a 
little deeper and you will find my general's name," 
meaning that it was engraven on bis heart. So must 
the image and glory of Christ be engraven on the 
heart of every successful soldier of Christ. It must 
be the all-subduing passion of his life to bring the 
reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts and souls of men. 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Beat Warfare. 113 



A little child who has this spirit will subjugate others 
to his King*, while the most talented and learned and 
active, without it, will accomplish comparatively little. 
If the hearts of the Christians of this generation were 
inspired with this spirit, and set on winning the world 
for God, we should soon see nations shaken to their 
centre, and millions of souls translated into the 
kingdom. 

Secondly: The soldiers of Christ must be abandoned 
to the war. 

They must be thoroughly committed to God's side : 
there can be no neutrals in this warfare. When the 
soldier enlists and takes the queen's shilling, he ceases 
to be his own property, but becomes the property of 
his country, must go where he is sent, stand at any 
post to which he is assigned, even if it be at the 
cannon's mouth. He gives up the ways and comforts 
of civilians, and goes forth with his life in his hand, 
in obedience to the will of his sovereign. 

If I understand it, that is just what Jesus Christ 
demands of every one of His soldiers, and nothing less. 

Some one may ask, " But we cannot all be ministers, 
or missionaries, or officers in the Salvation Army ; 
must we not attend to the avocations of this life, and 
work for the bread that perisheth for ourselves and 
our families ? " Certainly, but the great end in all we 
do must be the promotion of the kingdom. A man 
may work in order that he may eat, but he must eat 
to live, not to himself or for the promotion of his own 
purposes, but for his King, and for the advancement 
of His interests ; and if his heart is really set on this, 
he will have no desire to work at his secular calling 
longer than is absolutely necessary to promote this 

I 



4 Popular Christianity: 



object. When the necessary amount of work is done, 
he will gladly lay aside his implements of husbandry 
or handicraft for the sword of the Spirit, and for the 
conflict with ignorance, vice, and misery. Instead of 
spending his evenings in ease and self-indulgence, he 
will betake himself to the streets or other places of 
resort for the people, and will spend what would have 
been his leisure hours in pressing on them the claims 
of God and of His truth. There will be no running 
away, no forsaking of the cross, no shrinking from the 
hard places of the field ; but a determined pushing of 
the battle to the gate, even amid weariness, opposi- 
tion, and sometimes in the face of dire defeat. I ask, 
W as it any less a devotion than this which actuated 
the martyrs and confessors of old ? Have I depicted 
an abandonment greater than that which they under- 
stood to be their duty and privilege ? If they might 
have drawn back, why did they persevere, many of 
them, through long years of conflict and persecution, 
culminating in stripes, imprisonment, and death ? It 
is evident that they understood fidelity to Christ to 
involve the most perfect self-abandonment, both in life 
and in death. 

Then, third : Christ's soldiers must understand the 
tactics of war. 

In order to do this, they must make it a subject of 
earnest and prayerful study how to make the most of 
their time, talents, money, or any other resources 
which God may have placed at their command for the 
advancement of the kingdom. They must think and 
scheme how best to attack the enemy. Only think of 
the time, trouble, skill, and money that are expended 
by great killing armies in planning for stratagem and 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Waif are. 115 



manoeuvre in order to surprise and overcome their 
enemies. Some of you will remember reading, in the 
records of the last German and French war, that the 
German officers were better acquainted with the geo- 
graphy of France than the French themselves ; they 
knew every road, by-way, and field, likely to be avail- 
able for their purposes. Think of the time and 
trouble that must have been expended in becoming 
thus familiar with a foreign country, and compare this 
with the haphazard, rule- of- thumb kind of way in 
which spiritual warfare is for the most part conducted. 
Think of the undigested schemes and abortive plans, 
throwing away both labour and money, embarked in 
by professed Christian soldiers, who have never, per- 
haps, spent a day's anxious thought and prayer over 
them in their lives. Think also of the shameful in- 
difference — which cannot be characterised as warfare 
at all — of the ordinary services and arrangements of 
the churches. It often makes my heart ache as I pass 
some stately, closed-up church or chapel, with its 
antiquated board with a shame-faced, insignificant an- 
nouncement that the cc Reverend So-and-so will 
preach/' or a " Gospel address will be delivered " at 
such a time on such a day; in which it is evident 
nothing is contemplated beyond securing the eye and 
attention of those who already have a liking for going 
to churches and chapels. And as I sometimes read 
the lists of meetings connected with ordinary churches, 
I say to myself, " As it was in the beginning, is now, 
and ever shall be/' is evidently the creed of the 
originators of this programme, not with respect, per- 
haps, to the doctrines they preach, but with respect to 
the old-fashioned, effete methods by which they con- 



116 Popular Christianity : 



tinue to publish, them. Oh, is it not time that the 
professed children of light should learn, as the great 
Captain of our salvation exhorted them, wisdom by 
contrast with the children of darkness ? 

As I heard some friends talking the other day about 
the rescue of Gordon, and listened to their calcula- 
tions as to the probable cost being some millions of 
money, and perhaps thousands of lives, I could not 
help thinking, yes, and I suppose all England (the 
Christians included) will think this quite a legitimate 
expenditure of both money and life to rescue this one 
man and the little band who is with him ; and yet, if 
we were to ask for a few millions of money, and pro- 
pose to sacrifice a few hundreds of lives in the rescue 
of millions of the human race from a bondage of 
misery and destruction ten thousand times more ap- 
palling than that which threatens General Gordon, 
they would call us mad enthusiasts and senseless 
fanatics. Alas, alas ! we may well ask, Where is the 
zeal of the Christians of this generation for the Lord 
of hosts ? How much do they care about His reign 
over the hearts of their fellow-men ? What is their 
appreciation of the present and eternal "benefits em- 
braced in His salvation ; or what is their estimate of 
the " crown of life " which He promises to give to 
every one of His conquering soldiers ? 

Fourth : The soldiers of Christ must believe in victory. 

Faith in victory is an indispensable condition to 
successful warfare of any kind. It is universally 
recognised by generals of killing armies, that if the 
enthusiasm of expected conquest be destroyed, and 
their troops imbued with fear and doubt as to the 
ultimate result, defeat is all but certain. This is 



Its Cowardly Service v. the Real Warfare. 117 

equally true with respect to spiritual warfare, hence the 
repeated and comprehensive assurance and promises 
of victory from the great Captain of our salvation. 

The true soldier of Christ, who has the spirit of the 
war and who is abandoned to its interests, has an 
earnest in his soul of coming victory. He knows it is 
only a question of time, and time is nothing to love ! 
As he is lying in the trenches, or taking long 
marches, or suffering for the want of common neces- 
saries, or enduring the sharpest bayonets or heaviest 
fire of the enemy, or lying wounded, overcome by 
fatigue, pressed by discouragement, realizing the 
greatness of the conflict in contrast with his own 
weakness — in the very darkest hours and severest 
straits, he has the herald of coming victory sound* 
ing in his ears. The faithful soldier knows that he 
shall win, and that his King will ultimately reign, not 
only over a few, but over all the kingdoms of this 
earth, and that He must reign till He has put all 
enemies under His feet. This faith inspires him to 
endure hardship and to suffer loss, to hold on. He 
never thinks of turning his back to the foe, or shirk- 
ing the cross, or turning the stones into bread, or of 
trying to shorten the march. He never thinks of 
withdrawing from the thick of the fight, but goes on 
through perils by land, by sea, by his own country- 
men, by the heathen, by false brethren at home and 
abroad. He looks onward through the dark clouds to 
the proud moment when the King will say, "Well 
done, good and faithful servant ! " He listens, and 
above the din of the earthly conflict he hears the 
words, " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
thee a crown of life ! 93 



LECTURE V. 

THE SHAM JUDGMENT IN CONTRAST WITH THE 
GREAT WHITE THRONE. 



u v 



The Sham Judgment in contrast with the Great 
Whitbj Throne. 



The Sham Judgment. 

Many people dislike the very sound of the word 
judgment. They have abandoned, as far as they can, 
any belief in a judgment to come, and they ignore as 
uncharitable and severe any expression of judgment 
as to the doings and characters of individuals in the 
present; but somehow the instincts of humanity are 
too strong for them, and these very people find them- 
selves, in spite of their theories, pronouncing judg- 
ment both on themselves and others every day of their 
lives. 

God has reared a judgment seat in every man's 
conscience, which in some slight measure answers to, 
and prefigures the sentence which He declares He will 
pronounce on every man's action, whether it be good 
or bad. 

Then if there be a great Judge of all, and a standard 
of right and wrong which He has set up, it must be 
of supreme importance that we should correctly under- 
stand what this standard is, and that we should judge 
of the conduct of ourselves and of those around us 
according to it. Surely nothing could be more decep- 
tive and soul-ruining than to accept as correct any 

121 



122 Popular Christianity. 



short of the one unalterable and eternal standard of 
righteousness and truth which He has laid down ; and 
yet, alas ! popular Christianity distinguishes itself by 
nothing more than by a systematic misrepresentation 
of right and wrong, calling evil good and good evil. 
Just as in the days of Christ the spirit and essence of 
the law of God was set aside and made of no effect by 
traditional interpretations of the letter, so in our time 
interpretations and expositions, in direct antagonism 
to the plainest words of Christ, are palmed upon the 
world by many of the official representatives of Chris- 
tianity, who back up their false tenets by quotations 
from "the word," separated from their explanatory 
connections, and made to sanction views and practices 
the very opposite to the mind and intention of their 
Divine Author. 

In pointing out as plainly as I am able a few of 
these misrepresentations, I know only too well I shall 
lay myself open to criticism, and that I may even run 
the risk of wounding some hearts that I would fain 
cheer. But the vital importance of the subject will 
not permit me to pass it over lightly. 

First : "Judge not that ye be not judged" is one of 
the favourite texts of popular Christianity, which is 
interpreted to mean that we are on no account to 
form an opinion of the rightness or wrongness of any- 
body's conduct. Under the specious guise of charity, 
faith and unbelief, obedience to God and disobedience, 
sin and holiness, are to be confounded in one indis- 
criminate hodge-podge, and their actors and abettors 
treated exactly alike, making no separation between 
the precious and the vile. 

This spurious charity is pushed to such an extent 



Sham Judgment. 



123 



that even the man who has pledged himself to preach 
certain doctrines, and who is actually employed as the 
agent of a Church for so doing, is not to be condemned 
if his " riper judgment " should lead him to renounce 
those doctrines; while at the same time he holds fast 
the salary and position with which he was entrusted in 
view of his original engagement. 

On the same principle we are asked to allow that 
people who never go to a place of worship or bow 
their knees in prayer may be as good and faithful 
servants of God as any others. We are told that 
perhaps they are carrying out " the Divine will in a 
spirit of true devotion to duty/' that working is 
praying, and that a man's belief bounds his respon- 
sibility, and so forth. 

"We are all aiming at the same thing " is a favourite 
way of expressing this popular Christianity, which just 
suits the ideas of drunkards, adulterers, and liars, as 
well as of shallow professors. 

To declare positively that people are sinners, con- 
demned already, and on their way to hell, is accounted 
as "uncharitable judging/' "really dreadful/' and no 
one, we are told, can possibly be justified in coming to 
such a conclusion. 

All this we could understand perfectly, coming from 
the camps of infidelity or from the haunts of vice ; but 
to find it passed off in connection with the name and 
teachings of Jesus Christ is monstrous indeed. What 
a sham to worship Him who declares Himself to be 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life, if there be no 
certain way, no definable difference between the true 
and the false, no practical separation between the 
Christ life and the life without Christ ! Surely it is 



124 



Popular Christianity. 



high time for all who care about the reign of Christ 
on the earth to make up their minds to one thing 
or the other. If Christ be our Master, let us learn 
His lessons, and abide by His rule, and obey His com- 
mands. If, on the other hand, some are unwilling to 
see any difference between the narrow and the broad 
road, between those who are in the kingdom of God 
or out of it, who are with Christ or against Him, let 
them be honest enough to declare openly that they have 
no Christ and will have no prophet but u Society." 

Another text which might be taken as setting forth 
a very favourite theory of modern Christianity is that 
in which Paul personified the struggles of a convicted 
but unsaved soul : " For the good that I would I do 
not : but the evil which I would not, that I do." We 
are all to look upon ourselves as "poor, incapable, 
fallible creatures/' and this assumed humility is to 
absolve us from all condemnation, on account either 
of doing evil or neglecting to do good. Instead of 
condemning ourselves or others, when convicted of 
some flagrant wrong or manifest inconsistency, we are 
to look upon it as only what might have been ex- 
pected. How often have I heard people say, with 
regard to some man holding an official position of 
great responsibility in the Church, "Well, he does 
not do this, that, or the other (whatever may be the 
duty in question) as he might; but, you know, he 
can't do everything." Such an apology as this would 
be beautiful in the extreme, applied to those who are 
known to be earnestly and faithfully striving to do 
their share for the extension of the kingdom of God ; 
but when applied, as I have generally heard it, to what 
every one knows to be a systematic and inexcusable 



Sham Judgment. 125 

neglect of everyday duty, it is no more nor less than a 
wholesale cloaking of sin. But, friends, whatever you 
do, never allow your minds for a moment to trifle with 
questions of duty, for nothing can be more fatal to 
either body or soul than to give way to the theory 
that one really cannot be expected to do what one 
ought. 

How differently people treat this question of doing 
their duty in commercial matters. Imagine the busi- 
ness man who cannot attend to all his customers, or 
who thinks it unnecessary to keep his place of business 
open all the week and every week. What would you 
think of a servant who should consider it unreasonable 
to get up at the proper time every morning, or carry 
out your wishes in matters in which her views differed 
from yours ? How long could society hang together 
if this looseness of thought as to what we ought and 
ought not to do were permitted to enter into the 
sphere of every day life ? But alas, alas ! how much 
more ruinous is this looseness when it relates to our 
great spiritual duties towards God and our fellow- 
creatures. Either you ought or you ought not always to 
pray and not to faint — to learn and to do the will of 
God, to care for perishing souls, to warn, counsel, and 
help those around you ; and what applies to you applies 
to all who take upon them the name of Christ in any 
way whatever. We should never, on any account, 
allow ourselves to excuse any neglect of God and 
duty, because such neglect is all but universal, but 
we should look at things as they are, and in the light 
of the judgment throne; and when we see conduct 
worthy of condemnation, condemn it, and be deter- 
mined to separate ourselves in heart and life from evil 



126 Popular Christianity. 



practices, however much respected they may be, and 
to take our stand on the side of duty and of God at all 
costs. 

I tell you honestly that I have turned away num- 
berless times of late years, and with almost despairing 
disgust, from audiences of what would be called intel- 
ligent Christians, that is to say, persons who talk and 
act upon an intelligent view of any imaginable subject, 
except that of Christian duty. How often do I hear the 
remark, €€ We know things are not as they should be," 
from people who have not the slightest intention of 
striving in any way to make things better, and who 
would not, on any account, incur the odium of express- 
ing any condemnation on that neglect of religious duty 
which they profess so much to deplore. Away with 
this unmanly, unwomanly cowardice. We have the 
light; let us come to it in order to see whether our 
deeds, and the deeds of those around us who profess 
to be " working for God," are wrought in Him. We 
can, by God's grace, do our duty, if we will. As we tried 
to show in a former lecture, Christ came on purpose 
to empower us to do it ; but let those who will not 
have such a doctrine and such a Christ, but who 
prefer to accept the miserable theories of impotency, 
which would not be tolerated for a moment in the 
kitchen, the shop, or the exchange,— let them at least 
save Christ from the indignity of having such helpless, 
incapable creatures called by His name, and professing 
to be His followers. He says with respect to all such, 
" Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
that I say ? " 

ee But the Lord looks at the heart," is another of the 
pet doctrines of popular Christianity. 



Sham Judgment. 



127 



True, terribly true in the right sense, — for God is 
not to be mocked with lip service or the formality of 
worship in which the heart has no share, — but false, 
ruinously false, when it means, as it generally does, 
that all sorts of wrong may be passed over and excused, 
if people only say they mean to do right. 

I rejoice beyond all expression in the precious 
thought of the Lord's long suffering and tender mercy 
towards those who sit in darkness ; and if we were 
living in the centre of Africa, where people have been 
trained only to fear and worship some hideous ima- 
ginary power of evil, — if we had absolutely no spirit of 
truth, and no word of light to hear or to read, no 
knowledge of God or a Saviour, — it might be admissible 
to consider everybody right who meant right; but 
even those in this country who are most sceptical as 
to Divine revelation cannot pretend to be in any such 
position as this, much less people who profess to call 
themselves Christians. Is there anybody here taking 
refuge in this hollow subterfuge ? Friend, let me ask 
you, did you really worship and serve God last Sunday? 
Had you any convictions as to what He wished you 
to do, not only on that day but throughout the 
following week ? If so, have you acted on them, have 
you honestly tried to carry them out ? If not, do not, 
I beseech you, try to pacify your conscience with any 
silly nonsense about the Lord looking at the heart. 
He has plainly told us over and over again in the New 
Testament, and in the very last book of it, that He 
will judge every man according to his works, and, more- 
over, He has laid down the same rule of judgment for 
us. " By their fruits ye shall know them.-" " Little 
children, let no man deceive you : he that doeth 



128 Popular Christianity. 



righteousness is righteous. " I fear there are thousands 
of professed Christians excusing themselves from the 
performance of the most manifest duty by this excuse; 
for instance, when a prayer meeting is announced, there 
are a certain number of people who make an effort to 
be present, but a much larger number of so-called 
Christians who deliberately choose to keep away. It 
is quite allowable to apply the doctrine of the Lord's 
looking at the heart to the poor mother who would 
fain be there, were she not detained by the inexorable 
claims of half a dozen little children ; but to cloak over 
with the same excuse, the constant indifference, nay, 
positive irreligion, in the great majority, is only to 
refuse to come to the light because it would condemn 
you. People who mean well, where there is no physi- 
cal impossibility in the way, do ivell ; but those who 
fail to do well, will fare ill when the great reckoning 
day comes. 

Further, I charge it upon popular Christianity, 
even when it does pay some tribute to the truth with 
regard to character, by recognising here and there 
what it calls an " excellent man/' or a " noble wo- 
man/' that when you come to examine into the 
meaning of these phrases, they are, in many instances, 
utterly misleading. Most generally the persons thus 
eulogised are distinguished, rather for the lack of 
those peculiar characteristics set forth by Christ and 
His apostles as of supreme importance, than by the 
possession of them. Just try to call up a person so 
distinguished within your own knowledge, and ask 
yourself how they have earned their title. To begin 
with, do they excel in prayer, or are they in most 
cases persons who were never known to pray in 



Sham Judgment. 129 



public, or, at any rate, without being specially called 
upon to do so ? Or, are they renowned for praying 
by the bedsides of the sick, or even with their own 
families in the privacy of their own homes ? Do these 
persons excel in faith, shown by their works in the 
way of bold, straightforward testimony for God, or 
in daring, unpopular enterprises for the salvation of 
men ? or are they generally silent both in public and 
private, giving no personal testimony as to their 
knowledge of Christ, and carefully abstaining from 
any outward demonstration on His behalf, which 
would bring them into discredit with their neigh- 
bours ? Probably they do excel in what is called 
charity; but is not this generally due to the fact 
that they are much richer than others, and only out 
of their enormous abundance do they contribute oc- 
casionally large sums for Christian or philanthropic 
objects. What a name may be acquired in modern 
Christendom by the judicious use of a few hundred 
pounds per year, without so much as speaking a kind 
word to a brother or sister in need, or denying your- 
self a moment's ease or a single luxury ! Is it not 
notorious that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 
it is simply the possession of a certain amount of 
wealth which gives a man or woman his or her grade 
in religious as well as in civil society, and that people 
chosen for and entrusted with leading positions in 
churches, are simply those who have the best houses 
of their own ? By-and-by their splendid coffins will 
be pompously deposited in the family vault, and you 
will be told that they "maintained an unblemished 
character for many years ; " that is to say, they 
neither got drunk, blasphemed, committed robbery, 

K 



130 



Popular Christianity. 



nor picked anybody's pocket. They lived in society 
in such a style as made them welcome in the circles 
of semi-worldliness everywhere. Their linen and their 
dresses were unblemished, for they never turned 
aside, like their Divine Master, .into any of the soiling 
habitations of the poor and the wretched, nor mingled 
amongst such mobs as continually jostled Him all the 
way through life. Their names were always men- 
tioned with honour, for they took care never to let 
them be used in connection with any enterprise, even 
on behalf of Jesus Christ, which was not considered 
" quite the thing." 

Do not misunderstand me. I am very far from 
wishing to pour contempt upon such persons, for 
without them what would become of the churches 
and of benevolent enterprises generally? I do not 
question that many of these individuals have at one 
time or other been converted, and might have become 
true saints, had they been faithfully dealt with; but 
alas ! they have, to a great extent, been made the 
victims of that sham judgment which now selects 
them as its standard-bearers. Of many of them, I 
doubt not, it might be written, were Jesus Christ 
again amongst us, and were they brought in contact 
with Him, that He looked upon them and loved them, 
notwithstanding all their worldliness and pride of 
position. But what I want to point out is, that such 
persons are not distinguished by popular Christianity 
for the peculiarly Christ-like traits in their characters, 
but for the possession and use of a long purse. This 
exaltation of mere morality with money stamps modern 
Christianity as an unjust judge, and it will be fatal to 
your views of what Christ demands of you, if you 



Sham Judgment. 



131 



accept its model men and women as the representa- 
tives of Christian excellence. 

Fifth : As I have before remarked, there has come 
over society of late quite a fever of professed benevo- 
lence towards the poor ; and yet, in connection with 
this very pleasing awakening to the existence of 
millions of miserable people, we have another strik- 
ing illustration of the sham judgment of modern 
Christendom. " Those wretched, filthy people " are 
simply the poorer classes, who are compelled by their 
poverty to herd together by families in small rooms, 
surrounding perhaps a court-yard full of oyster-shells 
and other refuse, at which society — and Christian 
society, too — turns up its nose, and declares that the 
people breathe an " atmosphere of moral pollution." 
Perfectly true ; there is an atmosphere of moral pollu- 
tion present in these dark alleys and horrible dens, to 
which people are driven by thousands, that others may 
have plenty of room in which to carry out their ideas 
of civilisation ; but to eyes that look at things in the 
light of God, I say there is an atmosphere of moral 
pollution, not a wit less dangerous, and far more 
blameworthy, in very different circles. 

Is it not notorious that multitudes of people amongst 
what are called the higher classes deliberately denude 
themselves of ordinary clothing, and then go in a half- 
dressed condition, with every addition of ornament 
that can be conceived, to insure that they shall be 
noticed and admired, to large places of public amuse- 
ment ? Is there not a growing disposition in Chris- 
tian circles to look upon it as perfectly harmless for 
Christian families, including often those of ministers, 
to spend hours together, dressed in the way I have 



132 



Po]j u lav Chris tianity. 



described, at parties, balls, and other entertainments, 
frequently given within the precincts of some conse- 
crated building, or in order to raise money for church 
purposes ? Now, I ask, how it comes to pass that the 
poor are spoken of as herding together without re- 
gard for decency, under the circumstances of necessity 
which I have described ; while the herding together 
of the rich and well-to-do in this voluntary indecency 
should be regarded with complacency and described 
as refined and genteel ? That such is the judgment 
of modern Christendom can only be attributed to one 
fact — the power of the purse ; and that the Churches 
should in the main devote their attention to the well- 
to-do classes, while they regard the masses of the 
people as a kind of outside element, to be operated 
upon by separate agencies, as a few missionaries and 
Bible-women, is, I contend, a crying scandal to the 
Saviour's name. The judgment of Jesus Christ led 
Him to spend most of His time herding with fisher- 
men, with publicans and sinners. Their language 
might often be very violent and bad, and their home 
life simply scandalous ; but the Son of God preferred 
to make His bed in a fishing-boat, and to sit talking 
with that infamous woman of Samaria, rather than to 
hobnob with the religious swelldom of Jerusalem, the 
outside of whose cup and platter would have passed 
muster with modern Christianity, whilst their lives 
were full of hypocrisy and unrighteousness. 

Sixth : " The brutal tastes of the lower orders " is 
another pet phrase of modern Christendom. 

It represents the idea that for a poor man, who has 
to keep himself and his family on a few shillings per 
week by hard labour, which takes away all inclination 



Sham Judgment. 133 

towards study or more exalted pursuits, it is a brutal 
taste to like to have a quart of fourpenny beer as often 
as his scanty means will allow. It is a brutal taste to 
take pleasure in seeing two men fight each other, with 
their fists inflicting in the course of half an hour many 
hard knocks and bruises ; and it is a still more brutal 
taste which leads men to train animals to fight each 
other, and to take pleasure in seeing them do so. 
Now I perfectly concur in the denunciation of all 
these evils, from which God is enabling the Salvation 
Army to rescue multitudes of these poor, so-called 
" brutal fellows ; " but let us turn the light of truth 
upon the Christian society which shrugs its shoulders 
in horror at the mere description of these men who 
get drunk and beat their wives ; the Christian society 
whose refined taste leads it to have as little intercourse 
as possible with these lower orders. 

What sort of taste is it, which, in the presence of 
the existing state of things among the poor, spends 
not fourpence but four shillings, and double and treble 
that sum on a single bottle of wine for the jovial 
entertainment of a few friends, and from twenty to 
forty pounds for a dinner to be swallowed by a dozen 
or two of people ? I maintain that no splendid furni- 
ture, no well-trained and liveried servants, no costly 
pictures or display of finery or jewels, can redeem such 
a scene, viewed in the light of the teachings of Christ, 
from being worthy of being called " brutal," and all 
the more brutal because it is delighted in by persons 
whose intelligence and knowledge of the awful state 
of things in the world around them must make them 
fully aware of the good that might be done with the 
money which they thus lavish upon their lusts. 



134 Popular Christianity. 



Let me take you to another scene. Here is His 
Grace, the Duke of Rackrent, and the Eight Honour- 
able Woman Seducer, Fitz- Shameless; and the gallant 
Colonel Swearer, with half the aristocracy of a county, 
male and female, mounted on horses worth hundreds 
of pounds each, and which have been bred and trained 
at a cost of hundreds more, and what for ? " This 
splendid field " are waiting whilst a poor little timid 
animal is let loose from confinement and permitted to 
fly in terror from its strange surroundings. Observe 
the delight of all the gentlemen and noble ladies when 
a whole pack of strong dogs is let loose in pursuit, 
and then behold the noble chase ! The regiment of 
well-mounted cavalry and the pack of hounds all 
charge at full gallop after the poor frightened little 
creature. It will be a great disappointment if by any 
means it should escape, or be killed within as short 
a time as an hour. The sport will be excellent in 
proportion to the time during which the poor thing's 
agony is prolonged, and the number of miles it is 
able to run in terror of its life. Brutality ! I tell 
you, that in my judgment, at any rate, you can find 
nothing in the vilest back slums, more utterly, more 
deliberately, more savagely cruel than all that ; and 
yet this is a comparatively small thing. One of the 
greatest employments of every Christian government 
and community is to train thousands of men, not to 
fight with their fists only, in the way of inflicting a 
few passing sores, but with weapons capable, it may 
be, of killing human beings at the rate of so many per 
minute. It is quite a " scientific taste" to study how 
to destroy a large vessel with several hundreds of men 
on board instantaneously. Talk of brutality ! Is there 



Sham Judgment. 



135 



anything half as brutal as this within the whole range 
of rowdyism? But against all this, modern Christianity, 
which professes to believe the teaching of Him who 
taught us not to resist evil, but to love our enemies, 
and to treat with the utmost benevolence hostile 
nations, has nothing to say. All the devilish ani- 
mosity, hard-hearted cruelty, and harrowing conse- 
quences of modern warfare, are not only sanctioned but 
held up as an indispensable necessity of civilised life, 
and in times of war, patronized and prayed for in our 
churches and chapels, with as much impudent assurance 
as though Jesus Christ had taught, " But I say unto 
you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and, return 
evil for evil, hate your enemies and pursue them with 
all the diabolical appliances of destruction which the 
devil can enable you to invent." Alas, alas! is it 
not too patent for intelligent contradiction that the 
most detestable and brutal thing in the judgment of 
popular Christianity is not brutality, cruelty, or in- 
justice, but poverty and vulgarity ? With plenty of 
money you may pile up your life with iniquities, and 
yet be 'blamed, if blamed at all, only in the mildest 
terms, whereas one flagrant act of sin in a poor and 
illiterate person is enough to stamp him, with the 
majority of professing Christians, as a creature from 
whom they would rather keep at a distance. I had an 
amusing corroboration of this the other day from one 
of my younger daughters who had been visiting a poor 
criminal in one of our large prisons. She said to one 
of the officers in attendance, " I suppose you do not 
often have rich people in here?" He replied, "No, 
miss, we very seldom get anybody but poor folks," 
and on her replying, " No, I am afraid it is because 



136 Popular Christianity. 



you do not look out so sharply for them/' he remarked 
to a fellow officer, " She's all there." 

Seventh: Further, "the criminal classes" is another 
of the cant phrases of modern Christianity, which 
thus brands every poor lad who steals, because he is 
hungry, but stands, hat in hand, before the rich man 
whose trade is well known to be a system of wholesale 
cheatery. 

It is never convenient for ministers or responsible 
churchwardens or deacons to ask how Mr. Money- 
maker gets the golden sovereigns or crisp notes which 
look so well in the collection. He may be the most 
" accursed sweater " who ever waxed fat on that 
murderous cheap needlework system, which is slowly 
destroying the bodies and ruining the souls of 
thousands of poor women, both in this and other 
"civilised" countries. He may keep scores of em- 
ployees standing wearily sixteen hours per day behind 
the counter, across which they dare not speak the 
truth, and on salaries so small that all hope of marriage 
and home is denied to them. Or he may trade in 
some damning thing which robs men of all that is 
good in this world and all hope for the next, such as 
opium or intoxicating drinks; but if you were simple 
enough to suppose that modern Christianity would 
object to him on account of any of these things, — in 
fact, that you were alluding to such as he, in the 
phrase " criminal classes," — how respectable Christians 
would open their eyes, and, in fact, suspect that you 
had recently made your escape from some lunatic 
asylum, and ought to be hastened back there as soon 
as possible. If any one should dare to cast any reflec- 
tions upon any of these Christian money-makers, the 



Sham Judgment. 



137 



representatives of their churches would say, " Hush, 
hush, my dear sir, Mr. So-and-so is the great man at 
our place, you know; they would be glad enough of 
him at the church opposite, but he likes our minister, 
and we mean to propose him as a deacon at the next 
church meeting." So the wholesale and successful thief 
is glossed over and called by all manner of respect- 
able names by the representatives of a bastard Chris- 
tianity. It is ready enough to cry, Stop, thief, when 
some poor fellow who has been out of work for perhaps 
months, gets desperate at the sight of children crying 
for bread, and makes a bungling attempt at getting 
what is not his own in order to satisfy them; or when 
it hears that such men, left helplessly to their own 
devices, take to living together, and bringing up a 
generation of thieves, it cries out vigorously against 
the criminals. Sure, it may suggest a mission to 
them, and even set about it in a helpless patronising 
sort of w r ay, wondering if really it is of any use to try 
to help " such men," as though they were of different 
flesh and blood to themselves. Verily such Chris- 
tianity is of different blood from Him who preferred 
talking to a thief in His own last moments, to holding 
conversation with any priest or white- washed temple 
worshipper standing around. The man who hung by 
His side was a great ruffian, no doubt, but then he had 
been trained in that way; and if we want the judgment 
of Jesus Christ on such a point, He would certainly 
give it against the pet of modern Christianity, and in 
favour of this poor rough. The man whom Jesus 
Christ consigned to a hopeless perdition was he who 
made long prayers, and at the same time devoured 
widows' houses; or whose barns were filled with 



138 



Popular Christianity. 



plenty while Lazarus lay covered with sores at his 
gates. 

On no point does the sham judgment of popular 
Christianity appear more startlingly in contrast with 
that of Jesus Christ, than on the every- day question 
of honesty. It knows that its rich tradesmen are so 
dishonest in their modes of carrying on their business, 
that if some poor fellow comes out of prison, deter- 
mined to do right and earn his bread honestly, we 
know scarcely any with whom we dare entrust him, 
and with whom he would not be tempted to break his 
resolution, by being asked to tell business lies, or per- 
form business tricks, which to his " un christianised " 
intelligence is only another mode of thieving ; but 
Christianity goes on, with virtuous breath declaring 
that the poor and found-out thieves are criminals, 
while the rich and secret scoundrels are the valued 
supporters of her institutions. 

Further : " Desecrating the Sabbath " is another 
virtuous-sounding phrase, which is accepted as the 
expression of a very reverential religion. So it 
should be, but here the sham judgment comes in 
again ! What is desecrating the Sabbath ? "Well, 
it is not dressing up in fabulously costly clothes 
(sometimes unpaid for), as near in fabric, style, and 
fashion as can be to those worn in the very vilest 
services of sin. It is not to lie in bed consuming 
the early hours of the day, and then to flaunt in this 
array to one short service, as an exhibition of self and 
respectability, spending the remainder of the " sacred 
day " in an easy chair with the last new book. This 
is Sabbath keeping, even though to carry it out com- 
fortably, servants may have to work over an elaborate 



Sham Judgment. 



139 



dinner, or the turning out of a luxuriant equipage. 
Then what is " desecrating " ? Well, go and spend 
next Sunday evening in Mr. Easy's mansion, and he 
will show you. You will not have an unpleasant time, 
that is, if your notions agree with his. He will give 
you a splendid meal, and then you will be allowed to 
lounge on one of his soft couches, while your host tells 
you spicy stories about the popular ministers of his 
denomination, or his daughter will play to you some 
" sacred" music on the piano or the harp. Fire and 
lamp-light will gleam softly, and thick curtains shut 
out the night, about which some one will occasionally 
remark that it is " awful weather." 

Presently a harsh, discordant sound is heard, like 
shouting and singing with some brass instrumental 
music all mixed up ; and if you looked out you would 
see a little handful of men and women, wet and mud- 
stained, nearly exhausted in the struggle with rain 
and storm, and the half rough, half good-natured 
crowd, who have been allured out of yonder alley, 
and are now going, swearing, pushing, rolling along, 
in a fashion of their own, to a little room, or a low 
music-hall, where these tambourine players and the 
rest do congregate. Your host will jump up with 
an annoyed air, and exclaim with great emphasis, 
f Desecrating the Sabbath, that is what I call it ! " 
and he will go on to expound his views until you 
understand that it is a Sabbath breaking for those 
poor folks to have made a noise in the street, even 
though they were only doing what David and Jesus 
Christ insisted was to be done — praising God with a 
loud voice, and confessing Him before all men. For, 
" Blessed be the name of the Lord ! " or " Glory ! hal- 



140 



Popular Christianity. 



lelujah ! " certainly had rung clearly out above the din 
with almost tragic earnestness. You will learn that 
your host's son and daughter have kept the Sabbath 
by singing in the church choir, although you see them 
later on, the one reading a novel, the other strolling 
out of the house with a cigar and a hint about return- 
ing with the latch-key. Now I charge it upon popu- 
lar Christianity that its professors know all the mise- 
rable desecration which lies under the whole modern 
keeping of the day, and yet have not courage to con- 
demn, but keep their blame for some effort to serve 
the Lord which they deem vulgar and distasteful. 
Modern Christendom gives its judgment in favour of 
the hollow, conventional sacredness of the perform- 
ance of the dressed-up choir, whose very manner and 
countenance often betray the irreligion and frivolity 
of their hearts, and which neither wins the souls of 
sinners nor stirs the souls of saints ; but reserves its 
strongest censure for the unscientific, rough-and-ready 
brass band, which empties the public-houses and gets 
sinners saved by scores and hundreds. 

Further : " The Sanctuary/' according to modern 
Christian theories, is a " holy place/' and yet a place 
where no one must speak of being now and actually 
holy ! In fact, it is a place where scarcely anybody 
except the minister may say a word to, or for God ; 
where such a scene as that recorded in 1 Cor. xiv. 
23-31 would be counted the highest fanaticism, and 
next door to blasphemy. I have heard of a congre- 
gation being actually thrown into dismay by the cry 
to God for mercy of some poor sinner who had been 
previously convicted, and gone to that chapel in 
the hope of finding the way of salvation ; but he had 



Sham Judgment. 



141 



a near escape of being ejected by the beadle. Better 
everybody refrain their feet from going to these 
modern sanctuaries, than have a crowd of rough, 
needy sinners really wanting light and needing to 
be brought to repentance and salvation. " Keep 
silence before me/' says modern Christian society, 
and not a word is breathed to hurt its feelings. It 
is a literal fact that in these modern sanctuaries any 
manifestation of the living God is the last thing ex- 
pected or desired. Imagine the scare and horror of 
excitement and the intense surprise if He came, as He 
did once in an upper room, with His baptism of fire, 
in the middle of one of these quiet and soothing services 
next Sunday morning ! There would be a quicker 
and more precipitous exit of many of the professed 
worshippers than there was from the temple when He 
drove them out with a scourge of small cords ! The 
great work nearest to His heart — the gathering in of 
the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, or the 
victims of sin, debauchery, and crime, the thieves and 
the harlots — is the very last thing desired and ex- 
pected in these modern sanctuaries. That He should 
speak in what is called His own " house 93 is the last 
thing arranged for. Alas, alas ! do not these facts 
prove that these are the temples of Mammon, of 
respectability, of miserable, hollow, Pharisaic profes- 
sion, where all manner of ungodliness is glossed over 
by what answers to the tithing of mint, anise, and 
cummin ? and yet Christianity baptizes these temples 
with her name, and holds up to ridicule and contempt 
the open-air ring, where poor, simple, but devout and 
consecrated people, plead with God to speak, and try 
to make the world hear His message. 



142 



Popular Christianity. 



Farther : cc He is mucli to be condemned ! " 
What for ? 

Never, as we have shown, because he is taking it 
too easy ; never because he is enjoying a thousand a 
year, and letting men go on in sin undisturbed ; never 
because he makes no straightforward, bold confession 
of Christ, or takes not up the cross to follow Him ; 
never because he does not deny himself even the 
luxuries indulged by others in his " position/' in order 
that he may push on the interests of the kingdom of 
God in the world ! ! " But lie is much to be con- 
demned " who gets into trouble, — into a row, as it is 
politely termed, — for Christ's sake. Modern Christians 
ask with bated breath, " Why ever should he have 
gone and stirred up the moral cesspools all around 
him, filling the atmosphere with ' moral pollution 7 ? 
How could he be so quixotic and fanatical as to ex- 
pect to make things better where the bishops and 
clergy, and all the most influential good people of 
the day, had long decided that it was better left alone? 
We really cannot pity him," say these modern Chris- 
tians, " if he is set upon and traduced aud persecuted 
by all the libertines and whoremongers of the age ; 
we fear that he is seeking notoriety, and posing to 
be a martyr ! ! " And thus this bastard Christianity 
adds its bann to the curses of God's enemies on the 
man who has not done well for himself, but who has 
dared to stand up for the poor and helpless, for broken- 
hearted mothers and fathers, and for the innocent and 
infant victims of the devils of lust and villainy, in- 
carnate in the persons of rich debauchees. Modern 
Christianity has got rid to a great extent of damna- 
tion, but it can damn right vigorously in its own 



Sham Judgment. 



143 



fashion all those who (: go to extremes." It can pour 
its half-pitying, half-sneering contempt upon ignorant, 
blundering fishermen or mechanics, but who, never- 
theless, love God and souls, and believe in heaven 
and hell, and who really exercise self-denial and take 
trouble in order to serve God and save men. If such 
men go to prison to win some point for God and 
liberty of conscience, these Christians say in their 
drawing-rooms, in their magazines and newspapers, 
" Ah, they are trying to become notorious ! they are 
zealous of being thought martyrs ! " And thus they 
join hands, as of old, with those who stood around the 
cross and wagged their heads, and said, " He saved 
others, Himself He cannot save"; and they can pro- 
nounce this judgment with such a pious, ex-cathedra 
air that many simple men accept it as really the judg- 
ment of Christ's body on earth, instead of the hollow, 
sham verdict of modern Pharisees. 

In conclusion, let me repeat that if my words seem 
to condemn the great majority of the representatives 
of Christianity around us, it is with sincere grief that 
I admit it. Would to God there were few localities, 
few churches, and few ministers to which my remarks 
could be applied ! But if there be not few but many, 
I cannot help it. I appeal to you whether I have 
spoken more than the truth ; and I speak it in love 
to you who wish to hear and to obey it in the love of 
it. I would gladly forbear to speak out thus, — I have 
forborne for long, and have frequently felt condemned 
in so doing, and it is only because I see the utter 
hopelessness of any improvement, of any recurrence to 
the simplicity and purity of the gospel, without an 



144 



Popular Christianity. 



utter abandonment of the false and hollow judgment 
of modern Christianity with respect to the matters we 
have been reviewing, that I venture to speak thus, 
I would fain hope that some of you may be induced 
to forsake every refuge of lies which has been reared 
around you, and to abandon all the false standards of 
faith and practice to which I have alluded, and open 
your hearts and ears to listen to the voice that never 
changes, but which in all ages alike tells men of a 
just judgment to come. We must all appear before 
the judgment-seat of Christ; and it will be no excuse 
for us there that we were surrounded by false wit- 
nesses, sham lights, and an openly received system of 
hypocrisy. God has shown us His beloved Moses, 
Daniels, Nehemiahs, Jeremiahs, Pauls, Johns, and 
numberless other worthies, standing out gloriously 
alone in the midst of a Pagan society, full of refined 
and splendid iniquity, and standing out ever more 
Divine, when all around were " weighed in the balances 
and found wanting." You have but the old choice to 
make ; may God enable you to make it, and to stand 
out for God and righteousness against all around you. 



The Judgment of the Great White Throne. 

As we remarked in the first part of this lecture, the 
innate convictions of humanity are too strong for the 
successful annihilation of a dread of coming judgment. 
It seems to have been the universal opinion of the 
wisest and best of the human race that there ought 
to be a judgment. The continual miscarriage of 
justice in this world, and the unequal distribution of 



Judgment of the Great Wliite Throne. 145 



its goods and enjoyments ; its false standard of right 
and wrong ; its unjust and sham judgments, to which 
we have already alluded, have seemed to drive it in 
upon the reason of all thoughtful beings that there 
must come a settling day. 

The unavenged wrongs of multitudes of the poor 
and the oppressed ; of millions of slaves ; of poor, help- 
less children; of tens of thousands of poor, broken- 
hearted girls, — mere children, — who have been wrecked 
of virtue and happiness through the vice of those 
double or treble their age, and who were fully awake 
to the consequences of their conduct ; — wrongs such as 
these, and multitudes of others, all unjudged and un- 
requited in this world, seem to demand some future 
retribution. The unpunished sins of multitudes who 
have flourished in their lives and gone in triumph to 
their graves, who floated to their positions of eminence, 
fame, and luxury through the tears and blood of 
widows, orphans, and others, down-trodden by their 
greed and power, cry from the ground, as did the 
blood of Abel, for avenging justice. 

Methinks if we could face this guilty crowd and 
compel them to speak, they would be obliged to say, 
" Yes, during our lives we violated all law and justice, 
won the applause of men and the pleasures and honours 
in which we revelled by means of the sorrows and 
sufferings of our fellows ; but no strong arm stayed 
our progress, no tongue denounced our villainies, no 
power punished our crimes; we lived and fattened, 
and died with the approbation, nay, applause, of men 
ringing in our ears ; and after death we were praised 
and flattered on tablets of marble, in newspapers and 
biographies, as though we had been the excellent of 



146 



Popular Christianity. 



the earth. We know that we are of the devil; we 
expect and are waiting for the judgment/' 

Further, the common-sense of humanity perceives 
that human lives are all unfinished at the grave, and 
require some appendix, some explanation. If you 
found a book with the story all unfinished, — the 
villains and seducers all unpunished, and the poor, 
down-trodden slaves unavenged, the wronged and 
helpless people undelivered, — you would feel that 
there must be another volume somewhere. So, when 
life breaks up, with almost all men there are so many 
things and doings and feelings all unfinished, that you 
might write on every grave-stone, " To be continued 
in the next world." It is as if the tree were blighted 
at its bloom ; as if the life were sapped at its source ; 
as if the flood were turned back at its tide. 

But, as we have already noted, there is a judgment 
already begun here and now. The same Divinity is 
at work in this world who will reign and operate in 
the next, and He is working on precisely the same 
principles. The moral government of this world is 
going on under the shadow, so to speak, of the great 
white throne. The shadow of that tribunal is reflected 
on all the tribunals and transactions of this earth. 

Formerly, when the judges visited the provincial 
towns, there used to be a sort of public entry. The 
legal civic dignitaries went forth to meet them and 
march in procession with them into the town, pre- 
ceded by heralds with trumpets, announcing the 
coming of judgment for the wrong-doers of those 
towns. So God has His heralds abroad in the world, 
proclaiming that He is coming. These heralds are 
already gone forth ; they are here to-day. 



Judgment of the Great White Throne. 147 



There is a herald in every man's heart, giving fore- 
tastes of what the judgment will be, pointing out and 
convicting him of sin. 

Every transgressor of the Divine law stands con- 
demned before his own judgment seat. Conscience 
pronounces sentence on him according to his works, 
independently of all creeds and theories. A false 
gospel, under the auspices of popular Christianity, 
essays to set at nought this judgment, and to tell men 
that they are not to judge themselves according to 
their works, but according to their beliefs. But God's 
herald in them remorselessly holds up their sin, and 
points to coming retribution. Conscience asserts it- 
self, and the man who has sinned knows, feels that he 
must be judged. 

Further, not only does conscience convict of sin, 
but to a certain extent punishes sin, even here. What 
horrors men suffer from their guilty consciences, in 
spite of all their infidel reasonings and hopes. How 
many suicides will be found, like Judas, to have been 
driven to distraction by the remorse and anguish of 
realized guilt. Is not the fact that such suffering is 
the consequence of sin unquestionable evidence that 
so long as the soul continues to live and remain 
guilty, it must continue to suffer ? If transgressors 
can find no comfort or deliverance from this torment- 
ing sense of guilt in this world, on what principle can 
it be argued that they will find it in the next ? If 
conscience is too strong for them here, what ground 
is there for supposing that they will rise superior to 
it in the future ? 

Secondly : God has a herald in society. We have 
wandered a long distance from God in these days, I 



148 Popular Christianity. 



admit, and as distance from the sun brings correspond- 
ing darkness and obliterates the distinctions between 
natural objects, so distance from God brings spiritual 
darkness and induces blindness to moral distinctions. 
Nevertheless, far as society has got away from God, 
and rotten as it largely is, still it has the herald trum- 
pet blowing loudly enough to proclaim evil to he evil, 
and, being evil, to be amenable to judgment. And 
although many preachers of a false theology, under 
the patronage of popular Christianity, combine to per- 
suade men and themselves that they will escape punish- 
ment, the very libertines, thieves, gamblers, and moral 
bankrupts of all descriptions, pronounce their judgment 
to be false, saying, " Hypocrites all of you, we know 
we are of the devil ; his works we do, and we expect 
to go to hell." 

I have no doubt that the great secret of the success 
of the Salvation Army with multitudes of the openly 
wicked and profane is that we go straight to their 
consciences, attacking their sins, making no excuse or 
palliation, but telling them as straight as Jesus Christ 
Himself told the sinners of His day, that, except they 
repent, forsake their sins, and turn to God, everlasting 
fire must be their portion. This gospel answers to 
the voice of conscience within ; they know it is true, 
because it matches their most secret and powerful 
intuitions, whereas the popular gospel of this day, its 
judgment included, is the laughing-stock of hell ; it 
dare neither damn the sinner nor sanctify the saint. 

But we must now consider for a few minutes what 
the character of this judgment is to be, which is pro- 
claimed alike by conscience, reason, and religion. 
And the Bible, after all, is the great authority. It 



Judgment of the Great White Throne. 149 

meets us just where conscience and reason fail us, and 
responds to and corroborates the profoundest and 
most indestructible intuitions of humanity. 

Here the Bible comes forward and proclaims the 
fact of a coming judgment in the most emphatic and 
unmistakable language, and describes the principles 
on which it is to be conducted, and the consequences 
which are to follow from it, with the utmost minute- 
ness. I have avoided quoting texts more than I could 
help in former lectures, mainly because the number 
corroborative of each of my points would have been so 
overwhelming ; but I must necessarily quote three or 
four passages here, and shall take them from the 
words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, Jude, and John, that in 
the mouth of three or four witnesses this truth may be 
established. 

" The hour is coming, in which all that are in the 
graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and 
shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the 
resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil, unto 
the resurrection of damnation" (John v. 28, 29). 

" The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking ven- 
geance on them that know not God, and that obey not 
the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be 
punished with everlasting destruction from the pre- 
sence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power" 
(2 Thess. i. 7-9). 

" For we must all appear before the judgment seat 
of Christ; that every one may receive the things done 
in his body, according to that he hath done, whether 
it be good or bad" (2 Cor. v. 10). 

" But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the 



150 



Popu lav Christianity. 



night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with 
a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent 
heat, the earth, also and the works that are therein 
shall be burned up 99 (2 Peter iii. 10). 

" And the angels which kept not their first estate, 
but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in ever- 
lastiug chains under darkness unto the judgment of 
the great day" (Jude 6). 

" And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat 
on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled 
away ; and there was found no place for them. And 
I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; 
and the books were opened : and another book was 
opened, which is the book of life : and the dead were 
judged out of those things which were written in the 
books, according to their works " (Rev. xx. 11, 12). 

I accept that authority. That answers to the voice 
of my conscience. That satisfies the claims of my 
intellect. Here I perceive that God will avenge the 
wrongs, not only of His own elect, but of the father- 
less, the widow, and the oppressed of all ages, and the 
cry of my soul for justice is met, my sense of outraged 
righteousness is appeased, my conscience pronounces, 
" True and righteous art Thou, King of saints ! 99 

But people say, and a great many Christian people 
say in this day, " A good deal of the language in these 
and similar texts is figurative language." They do 
not like the doctrine ; it is too definite, too particular, 
too inclusive for them ; and so they try to explain it 
away. But supposing that some of the language were 
figurative, — what then ? What do you gain by making 
it out to be figurative ? What are figures for? Surely 
no one will argue that the judgment, as pre-figured in 



Judgment of the Great White Throne. 151 

the words of Jesus Christ and His apostles, will be less 
thorough, less scrutinising, less terrible than the figures 
used to set it forth ! Therefore it does not matter 
whether these be figurative expressions or no, seeing 
that they are calculated to convey the most awful and 
tremendous ideas of the judgment which any figures 
could convey, which the wisdom of God could select. 

Some of the objections which people bring against 
the literal fulfilment of these passages seem to me to 
be very weak. 

They say, " Where could be the scene of such a 
'udgment seat I" I answer, He who created the 
universe can surely make a platform big enough on 
which to judge the inhabitants of this little world. 
For aught we know, there may be one already erected. 
There may be a world of judgment going on, where 
the representatives of the Divine government are 
already at work, getting ready for the final sentence. 
We do not know. 

Again, they say, " Look at the time it would re- 
quire." But I say, He who has had patience to watch 
the long procession of man's iniquities through the 
ages of time will perhaps have patience to judge men 
on account of them ! And as one day is with the 
Lord as a thousand years, be sure, sinner, He will 
take the time to investigate your case; you will not 
be missed out. 

Note that this judgment is to be universal. 

These passages and numberless others declare that 
the dead, small and great, shall stand before God, and 
that every knee shall bow before Him, and every 
tongue confess to Him. If God in some way will deal 
individually with every son and daughter of Adam, 



152 



Popular Christianity. 



what does it signify where or by what method He 
does it, so that the end be secured ? You and I will 
find our way from the spot, wherever it may be, to 
heaven or to hell, according to the sentence. Our 
destiny in the great eternity which follows will be 
settled by the sentence, not the method by which it is 
arrived at. The great matter to us is that " we must 
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that 
every one may receive the things done in his body, 
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
bad." This is not the Old Testament. I have pur- 
posely confined my quotations to the New ; this is the 
revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, by which Paul 
declares God will " judge the secrets of men." 

Not only will every man and woman be dealt with, 
but every character will be demonstrated, made mani- 
fest 

There will be no whited sepulchre business there, 
no make-believe sentimental salvation, no false gospel, 
with its creeds and phrases, no ceremonial salvation, 
but we shall all stand revealed as we are, black or 
white, good or bad, washed or unwashed, pure or im- 
pure. 

What nonsense it is for people to talk of going 
down to death with their hearts full of iniquity, — " as 
a cage of unclean birds" as some of them are so fond 
of quoting. If so, what effect will death have upon 
their moral nature ? What cleansing stream will be 
opened by the Angel of Death ? If you are not saved 
from sin before you come down to the Jordan of death, 
there is no virtue in its waters to wash you. There is 
only one cleansing medium for souls, and that is the 
blood of the Lamb ; and you must get washed in life, if 



Judgment of the Great White Throne'. 153 



you want to pass muster at death and at the judgment 
seat. 

People say, " Do you think the sins of the saints are 
going to be dragged out at the judgment seat?" No ! 
not the sins of the saints, for they are cast behind His 
back; but the saints themselves are going to be 
dragged out. One great end of the judgment will be 
to decide who are the saints, and to show to the uni- 
verse that Jesus was equal to the work He had under- 
taken, namely, to destroy in the hearts of His saints 
the works of the devil, and that He was strong enough 
to hold them up against all the temptations and allure- 
ments of sin, blameless unto that day ; and now they 
are to be revealed and held up, not as dark, hollow, 
evil-hearted, hypocritical people, but as the saints of 
God, washed and saved and made clean and white, 
which you know means holy, in the blood of the Lamb. 
He will point all the devils in the universe to His 
saints ; they will be His boast and glory, and manifest 
victory over the devil. The question of questions 
then will be, Are you a saint ? 

Further, every character is not only to be settled 
and demonstrated, but it is to be judged according to 
its deserts — " according to that he hath done. 33 

He that knew his Master's will and did it not, is to 
be beaten with many stripes ; while he who knew it 
not and did things worthy of stripes, is to be beaten 
with few. " And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted 
unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell." 

We shall be judged according to our privileges, 
according to the light we have received, and the 
obedience we have rendered to it, not only outwardly, 
but inwardly; according to our rebellion or submis- 



154 Popular Christianity. 



sion to God ; according to our loyalty and obedience 
to Him, in our hearts as well as in our lives. 

I am afraid many, even of those who are saved, will 
suffer great loss in that day. There will be a great 
deal of wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold, silver, 
and precious stones. Oh, let us wake up in time to 
redeem the few remaining days of our lives. The 
past is irredeemable ; it is gone, and its losses must 
remain for ever. The harvest which we might have 
gathered is lost, and God Himself cannot make up to 
us for that loss. We may have many to-morrows, but 
we shall never have over again a yesterday. Oh ! 
friends, you who love Him will have to stand before 
His judgment seat to receive the things done in the 
body. What are you doing ? Are you visiting His 
sick or in prison ? Are you ministering unto Him 
when hungry or naked, in the persons of His poor ? 
When He is cast out and traduced in the persons of 
His persecuted ones, are you showing your love to 
Him by standing up for His character and doing what 
you can to defend Him ? Are you seeking after His 
lost sheep diligently until you find them, which 
means, you know, going after them ichere they are, 
however the thorns may prick your feet or the sun 
light on your head ? Are you doing these things ? 
because, if not, don't expect Him to say, " Inasmuch 
as ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, 
ye have done it unto Me." 

Can anybody imagine that Jesus Christ will pro- 
nounce a sort of figurative or sentimental judgment — 
that He will say, "Inasmuch as ye did this or that " 
to those who never did anything of the kind ? Such 
a proceeding would be very unlike anything He ever 



Judgment of the Great White Throne. 155 

did or said wlien on earth, would it not ? He was so 
true that He was called " the Truth ; " so intensely 
real and practical that no shadow of unreality or sham 
could endure His gaze for a moment. Is it possible 
to conceive that He will be any other when He comes 
to judgment? And yet how many of His professed 
followers are presuming on a Judge all meekness, 
mercy, and love, quite forgetting that in that day the 
reign of mercy will be ended and the Lamb that was 
slain will appear as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the 
Judge of all the earth, who will still do right. 

What are yon doing, friend ? As the stories come 
to me from Hackney Wick, Seven Dials, St. Giles', 
the Borough, and other parts where our people are 
visiting and working continually, — stories of desti- 
tution, sickness, sorrow, and suffering, no less than of 
sin and crime and shame, — I feel, what can I do, what 
can I say that will arouse God's professed people to 
some concern and care for these poor lost multitudes ? 
Our people tell me they find people who say, " Don't 
talk to us about a God : we don't believe in such a 
Being. Don't tell us about Christians : we want 
neither you nor your tracts, nor your Bibles — away 
with you. We don't believe in such Christians, who 
leave us to die in want and misery like this." Men 
and women nearly naked, children absolutely so, 
women who must not look off from their match-box 
making, at 2\d. per gross, or their shirt stitching, at 
3d. each, for fear of reducing their earnings a half- 
penny, and thus robbing their children of an ounce 
more bread, or the rent of their wretched room of the 
last fraction which an inexorable (perhaps Christian ?) 
landlord exacts. Thousands of such wretched beings, 



156 



Popular Christianity. 



without a bed to lie upon, without fire to warm them, 
or suflScient food to keep body and soul together, are 
living in the greatest degradation and sin all over 
this London, perhaps not two hundred yards from the 
very spot where we are assembled this afternoon; and 
yet who cares for them, or visits them, or weeps over 
them with a really Christ-like sympathy? Who 
carries them either the bread that perisheth or the 
Bread of Life ? You London Christians, what shall 
you say in the great day of account ? Where shall you 
stand ? How will you look ? Oh, friends, give up 
the sentimental hypocrisy of singing, — 

" Rescue the perishing, 
Care for the dying," — ■ 

in the drawing-room to the accompaniment of the 
piano, without ever dreaming of going outside to do 
it ; such idle words will prove only a mockery and a 
sham in the great day of account. Such songs will 
come booming back on the ears of the soul with more 
awful forebodings than the echoes of the Archangel's 
trumpet itself! Sentimentalism will have no resur- 
rection ; it will rot with the grave clothes ! What 
doth it profit, my brethren, to say to the hungry and 
naked, either physically or spiritually, Be ye warmed 
and filled, if, notwithstanding, ye give them not either 
the temporal or the spiritual bread ? He will say, 
" Inasmuch as ye did it not, depart from Me." 

Further, the verdict of that day will carry universal 
convictiou. 

Every being will feel that long-waited-for justice 
has come at last. The song which will burst forth 
from the lips of the saints, as they take their places in 



Judgment of the Great White Throne. 157 

the celestial city, will be, " True and righteous art 
Thou, King of saints ; " and methinks the same 
words, though not uttered by the lips, will be graven 
on the hearts of the hosts of the lost as they sink to 
meet their doom, and the realization of the justice of 
their sentence will make their hell. May no soul in 
this assembly, nor any who may read these words, ever 
realize what this means. Amen. 



NOTES OF THREE ADDRESSES ON HOUSEHOLD 

GODS. 



159 



NOTES OF THEEE ADDRESSES ON HOUSE- 
HOLD GODS. 



DELIVERED IN STEINWAY HA.LL, REGENT STREET. 

" Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to 
obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey ; whether of sin 
unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness ? " — Romans 
vi. 16. 

It is assumed all through this Book that every human 
being has a deity. In fact, we are so made that we 
must have a God. Even the man who says there is 
no God, worships a god notwithstanding, and that 
god is, " to whom he yields himself a servant to obey." 
Now God claims to be the Deity of the soul of every 
human being; but Satan has supplanted God, and he 
has done it in many ways. He has assumed many 
different forms in order to suit different classes and 
conditions of men. For one class of persons he 
finds one idol, for another class another. Bat the 
principle here laid down is, that whatever the outward 
form may be, that which usurps in a man's affections, 
life, and action, the place of God, becomes his deity. 
He need not outwardly label it idol, or bow his knees 
and worship it. The supremacy which he gives to it 
in his affections and life is the point. 

What an awful thought that in this so-called Chris- 
tian England, tens of thousands of people are as truly 
worshipping idols as are any of the inhabitants of 
Africa or China. 



162 



Popular Christianity. 



I want this morning to confine myself more par- 
ticularly to the gods of the household. Professing 
Christians speak about giving up the vanities of the 
world, and coming out from the world, when, alas ! we 
need not go outside the four walls of their own dwell- 
ings to find their god. I am afraid there are quite as 
many people who go wrong with these inside idols as 
with the outside ones. 

The first that strikes us as the most universal god 
of so-called religious society in this day is the 

God of Fashion. 

Now, what is fashion ? What does the term mean ? 
It means the world's way of having things, and the 
world's way of doing things. When we look abroad 
on the great majority of men and women around us, 
we see that they are utterly godless, selfish, and 
untrue, and yet the majority always fixes the fashion. 
It is not the few true, real, God-fearing, earnest men 
and women who want to serve God and help humanity 
who fix the fashion ; it is always the majority. Con- 
sequently, you see fashion is always diametrically op- 
posed to God's way of having things, and God's way 
of doing things. Therefore, the votaries of fashion 
cannot possibly be the servants of God ! There is no 
getting away from that conclusion. 

Let us now inquire what is God's great end or 
purpose in His way of doing things, and in the way 
that He has prescribed in which we are to have and 
to do things. What is shown by the constitution of 
our bodies, by the laws and ordinances of the heavens, 
and by the laws of nature, to be God's end in every- 
thing ? Utility ! If you look at your eye, or study 



Household Gods. 



163 



your ear or hands, or any other part of your body, 
you cannot find a single fibre or nerve which is not of 
some use in your animal economy — nothing super- 
fluous, nothing for waste or for the mere sake of being 
there. A useful result is the end contemplated. 
Look at the heavens — it is the same ; there is not 
a single waste star. Look at the animal creation 
— it is the same. Look at the vegetable creation — 
it is the same. The very rocks exist not for them- 
selves. The earth ministers to the wants of man and 
beast. There is nothing created for mere show, no 
useless part of creation. The aim of God in all His 
modes and works is the highest good to all His 
creatures. Now let us inquire what is the end of 
fashion. When we substitute the means for the end, 
we lose the great result God had in store for us. 
This is true in everything, natural, mental, and 
spiritual. Now, God's order is to have everything 
attuned to the highest result, especially in the case of 
His highest creature — man. He wants us to use 
every power and capacity He has given us for the 
highest ends — to serve God and humanity ! But 
fashion has turned God's order topsy-turvy, and set 
up as its end, supposed Beauty ! not that beauty 
which is an accompaniment of utility ; but fashion 
sets up beauty as the end, and not the accompaniment. 
Fashion says, " That is elegant. That looks grand, 
so it shall be so." So the great question comes to 
be in dress, in equipage, in our modes of doing busi- 
ness, in our furnishing arrangements, and in our insti- 
tutions, What is the order of fashion ? Fashion sets 
the law, and everybody does what everybody else 
does ; and all who will not bow down to this idol 



164 Popular Christianity. 



are called puritans, fanatics, straight-laced, or by any 
other terms of contempt most convenient. So hot is 
this furnace of contempt and scorn that it is one of 
the highest tests of moral courage in man or woman 
to set fashion at naught. It is one of the grandest 
things to teach your children from their babyhood to 
say, " No, I won't do that because everybody else 
does it. You must give me a better reason than the 
fashion for what I do.*" 

Fashion prescribes the form of dress for almost the 
whole world. Doctors may talk, and advise, and warn 
against high heels, tight waists, and insufficient cloth- 
ing, and all the monstrous and ridiculous appendages 
to dress which fashion from time to time prescribes. 
But it is fashion ! that is enough. Never mind if 
tight-lacing does squeeze my lungs and prevent me 
getting the necessary amount of air, thus inducing 
premature disease and death ; it is the fashion, and I 
must do it. Never mind if the high-heeled shoes pro- 
duce deformity of the spine and all manner of other 
injuries; it is the fashion, and I must have them. 
I must dress myself in the most ridiculous costumes 
which Parisian milliners can contrive, it is the fashion ; 
if the dress is too light, or does not half cover my 
body, never mind ; I shall wear it because it is the 
fashion. 

So, in the furnishing of people's houses, in a great 
many instances, it is the same. I have been in many 
houses where it seems to me that almost all utility and 
necessary comfort for health and work is lost sight of. 
It is almost all show, so that you are afraid to use a 
table for fear you will injure it. Oh, the money and 
time that are squandered, and the perpetual strife 



Household Gods. 



165 



that goes on to keep up this show because everybody 
else does it. 

In their very companionships fashion has decided 
what should be the ground and the rale of selection, 
and so fashionable people have only the companions 
that society has settled they are to have. They do not 
look, as yon would suppose rational beings would, for 
congenial society in the way of congeniality of thought, 
and feeling, and intelligence, that which gives vivacity 
and interest to communion with one another. Oh, no ! 
If a person ever so attractive and clever, and com- 
petent to interest, or instruct, or please them, happens 
to be a grade lower in the social scale, fashion says, 
" That person is not in your circle, he is out of your 
sphere; you cannot associate with such a person." 
So they deprive their intellects and hearts of the 
greatest delight, because fashion has prescribed what 
kind of people they should associate with, and if those 
people be ever so hollow and empty, never mind; 
they must obey the behests of fashion. 

Fashion has also settled that it is not the thing for 
people in certain positions and stations to go to such 
and such places, but that it is right for them to go to 
others, and so they go wherever fashion dictates. 
Fashion has even prescribed the way people shall 
move and the way in which they shall speak, and has 
got them pretty much squozen down into uniformity, 
so that all naturalness is lost and they are nearly all 
alike. It is the same kind of movement they make 
and the same kind of platitudes they utter, everywhere 
and in all circumstances. I hope there are not many 
of this class here this morning ; but if there are any, 
let me ask, How do you like the picture — the repre- 



166 



Popular Chris tianity. 



sentation of the claims of this Deity ? — that rational 
beings, intelligent creatures, some of them capable of 
great and glorious things, should be thus fettered and 
bound and squozen into one shape and reduced to 
nonentities and puppets ? 

Do you envy the fate of the devotees of fashion ? 
Will you worship this god any longer ? Thank God, 
He emancipated me twenty-five years ago, and I have 
been free ever since. If you are not yet emancipated, 
get emancipated this morning. 

Do not consider fashion when you are settling how 
you ought to order your household, but plan for the 
highest good of your children and those around you, 
and for your greatest usefulness in the world. Never 
mind fashion. 

In this day when chaplains of prisons and reforma- 
tories tell us that guady, flashy dressing leads as many 
young girls to destruction as drink, it behoves every 
true woman to settle before God in her closet what 
kind of dress she ought to wear, and to resolve to 
wear it in spite of fashion. If all professedly Christian 
ladies would do this, what a salvation this one reform 
alone would work in the world ! You young people 
here resolve that you will be original natural human 
beings, as God would have you ; resolve that you won't 
be squozen into this mould, or into that, to please 
anybody — that you will be an independent man or 
woman, educated and refined by intercourse with 
God; but be yourself, and do not aim to be anybody 
else. Set fashion at nought, If people would do 
this, what different households they would have ! 
What different children ! What different friends ! 
What different results they would produce in the 



Household Gods. 



167 



world, and how differently they would feel when 
they were dying ! Oh, what wasted lives ! What 
beautiful forms, and beautiful minds, and beautiful 
intellects are prostrated and ruined at the shrine of 
the god of fashion ! May God deliver us from this 
idol! 

Another of the most prominent of household gods 
is that of ease — comfort. In many instances the 
highest interests of the children and servants, the 
good of the bodies and souls of men, the serving and 
glory of God, are all made subservient to this god of 
comfort. 

Think for a moment what God requires of every 
human being. First, He requires all men to be His 
people ; and secondly, He requires of all His people 
that they should be absolutely His Servants. 

Now then, compare the duties of a servant with the 
idea of ease and comfort being the prevailing notion 
of a man's life, and you will see its absurdity. What 
would you think of a servant, whose prevailing idea 
was to make her or himself comfortable ? Suppose 
such a one saying, "Yes, I want the situation, I 
should like the wages, but I want my comfort most. 
I do not want to get up any earlier in the morning 
than the mistress or the master. I am not going to 
do any hard or troublesome work. I don't see why I 
should. I should like an easy chair to sit in, and 
certain hours of the day to myself. I am not going 
to do this or the other that is disagreeable to me. I 
am going to be comfortable." What would you 
think of such a servant ? 

You smile; well, if we are true and real, we have 
given up the ownership of ourselves. We have 



168 Popular Christianity. 



become literally the slaves of the living God, to do His 
bidding, to work for His interests, to look after His 
lost ones, to extend His kingdom, and to live for 
His glory ! This is what we profess. This is not The 
Salvation Army theology only. This is in all Church 
creeds, more or less. It was sworn over your bap- 
tismal font that you should renounce the devil and. all 
his works, that you should give up " the world " and 
be a true and real servant of the Most High God. 
And yet I am afraid many in this congregation have 
taken good care never to serve God at the expense of 
their own comfort ! If you suggest any plan of use- 
fulness, the first thing that meets you in one form or 
another is, " Oh, that would be hard work ; that would 
be a sacrifice ; or, I should have to give up so many 
evenings a week; or sometimes, alas, "that would 
interfere with my dinner hour." 

These ease-loving Christians do not look at the 
object that has to be accomplished for God ; but how 
it will effect their own ease and comfort. " I visit the 
poor ! Oh, I could not ; think of the smells I should 
have to encounter; look at the disagreeable sights I 
should have to see ! My delicate nerves would not 
bear it. Oh, no, I could not. If the Lord has any 
nice comfortable work, I have no objection ; but my 
comfort must first be considered. Your mission 
services are all very good, but we cannot have our 
household duties upset. We must have our domestic 
regularity — our comfort." I have wept many times as 
I have parted with such people, when these words 
forced themselves upon me : " Saul returned into his 
own house, but David gat him into the hold." 

David must go and fight and face the perils of the 



Household Gods. 



169 



wilderness, and endure all sorts of self-sacrifice, and 
conflict, and sorrow, but Saul goes back to his own 
house. He has done with it. He thinks his responsi- 
bility is at an end. When the meeting is over, these 
people who have heard all about the claims of God and 
the lost, and perhaps said a few sleepy words of sym- 
pathy, or given a five-pound note, away they go to 
their own houses ; but the real Davids must get up 
into the holds, or else God's armies will be wasted, 
and hell will be more largely peopled than it would be 
otherwise. Somebody must hold the fort, somebody 
must fight, somebody must suffer. Nothing can be 
done for humanity but through suffering, and if one 
won't, there falls a double weight upon another. Oh, 
the multitudes of souls who have made shipwreck 
through this god of ease ! It ruins the soul that 
worships, as well as hinders all the good that might 
be done for others. It has a stupefying, paralysing, 
damning influence upon every soul that once gives 
way to it. 

Once get under the dominion of that god, and you 
are done for. If you are under his dominion, for 
Christ's sake get up this morning and ask Him to 
snap the fetters that bind you. Jesus from the Cross 
cries to you. Suffering humanity is sinking at this 
hour by thousands into a hell on earth, and a nether- 
most hell hereafter. Up, Christians, arise and be 
doing ! Put off your sleepiness, your idleness, and set 
to work; bend your back to the burden, stoop to pick 
up the lost. They are crying all around you for 
help. 

If I understand this book, you will be called to an 
awful account if your opportunity, your strength of 



170 



Popular Christianity. 



body, your capacities for blessing your fellow-men are 
all buried and destroyed by this love of ease. 

Thank God, He emancipated me from that years 
ago. I have had the same temptations that others 
have had, and perhaps sometimes even extra tempt- 
ations, through excessive weariness, frequently hardly 
knowing how to get from my bed ; but I have had 
such a horror of getting under the dominion of this 
god of ease that I have set my whole nature against it. 

What would you think of a mother whose child was 
dangerously sick saying, " Keally, I am so burdened 
with the rest of my family, I have so much to think 
about, that I cannot give myself up to this child. I 
am very sorry, of course, I feel it very deeply, but I 
cannot deny myself the comforts of life. I must lie 
on the sofa so long, and I must do this, that, or the 
other, or go here and there ? " What would you think 
of such a woman ? And yet there are thousands of 
professing Christians who lie on the sofa, I am afraid, 
half their time. They don't know what to do with 
themselves, trying to get amused and occupied, and 
yet they profess to be God Almighty's Servants ! 

My friends, put this practical test to yourselves. It 
is of no use going to services and hearing beautiful 
sermons which you don't apply to yourselves. Are 
not these things realities ? If so, I say, for Christ's 
sake, for your soul's sake, and humanity's sake, act 
accordingly. 

Another household god — alas ! I wish it could be 
kept out of the household (for it is more especially 
the god of the world outside, yet it comes into the 
family and gets into the hearts of the very little 
ones) — 



Household Gods. 



171 



The God of Gain. 

Now God's order is for every man to look after liis 
fellow man — " look not every man on his own things, 
but also on the things of others/' but the world's 
order — its received maxim is — " every man for him- 
self." God's order is, " As ye would men should do 
to you, do ye even so to them." That means, you 
know, when you are making a bargain, don't run a 
man down below the lawful price of his goods, any 
more than you would like him to run you down. 
Don't beat down that poor woman in her work be- 
cause you know she has no one to appeal to. That is 
the spirit of selfishness, which is of the devil. 

This god of gain, how I see its sway sometimes in 
houses where I stay. What a contrast I often see 
between the interest excited by the news of the day, 
and any information respecting the kingdom of God. 
Tou know how morning prayers are got over very 
often — how superficial it all is, how little heart there 
is in it. It seems quite a relief to the worshippers 
when it is over ; then begins the real interest of the 
day. The gentleman seizes the newspaper, looks up 
and down the columns to see how the funds stand. 
If you keep looking at him you will tell in a minute 
if there is anything in the paper that touches him. 
If he is a merchant, the state of the market as to 
the things he buys or sells touches him to the quick ; 
if he sees something affecting his interests he will 
perhaps tell it to the wife, and then you will see the 
older children looking towards him with the greatest 
anxiety — the god of gain has his hand even on their 
young hearts. They may have some outward show of 



172 



Pop alar G hristian it y . 



being religious, but gain is the real god. If there is 
anything that entails immediate action in connection 
with the business, you see how everything else is at 
once put on one side. Then the lady says, " business 
must be attended to." Must is a sine qua non in the 
matter. Would to God they would put a must in 
somewhere else. The children all know the impor- 
tance of that must. They know, perhaps, that they 
have money, that they are to be rich some day, but 
nevertheless they want more. Their father cannot 
afford to lose if he has ever so much. Gain, gain — 
they must make gain ! That man may see in another 
column of the paper something which affects the work 
of God, but he only says a few sleepy words about it, 
" very sorry, very sorry indeed." Then down goes 
the paper, and he gets ready to go to his office. The 
column touching his gains touched him to the quick, 
the other only touched his sentimentality ; the one 
touched his interests, the other touched only those of 
Jesus Christ. 

Once I was at a conference, and I shall never for- 
get it. I saw a company of ministers deliberating 
on certain questions, and the questions were all on 
paper, so that everybody knew what was coming on. 
I noticed that when anything came up affecting 
the character, or position, or income of those in- 
dividuals, every man was in his place, every man had 
his paper and pencil, quick as lightning, to catch 
every word that was said. But when it was a question 
that only referred to the work of God, to the interests 
of the Church, to the salvation of souls, a number of 
them were out of their places altogether. Others had 
got the newspapers,, others were writing letters. 



Household Gods. 



173 



There was only a handful who were paying proper 
attention to the question. I thought, O my God, it 
is as it was in the days of old," there is not one of 
them that will keep Thy doors for nought ; they are 
all gone after their covetousness." Don't call that 
censorious. You know how true it is. I wish it 
were not. I feel as if I could give the blood out of 
my very heart that it might not be so, but it is so. I 
have no doubt the Apostle was forced much against 
his will to say and feel — " For all seek their own, not 
the things which are Jesus Christ's." Alas ! it had 
begun to be true then ; how much more true is it 
now ? I trust and believe that God is raising up a 
people who will seek His, in their very hearts' core, 
and who will be willing to sacrifice their own gain ! 

" The love of money is the root of all evil." Human 
experience justifies the Divine word. Show me a 
man who loves money for its own sake, for the sake 
of hoarding it and leaving it to his children, and I will 
show you a man whom the devil is sure of. There is 
no doubt about it, unless God in His omnipotent 
mercy awakens him and gives him grace to turn that 
devil of avarice out of his soul — " Covetousness, which 
is idolatry " — idol worship ! gold worship ! wealth 
worship ! ! 

Are you worshipping this god ? My friend, make 
haste for your life. You can no more be the Lord's 
servant and worship wealth, than the Jews were who 
crucified the Lord Jesus. 

Friends, go to your closets ; see whether you are in 
any measure under the dominion of this idol of gain ! 
see why you value your money ; see what you purpose 
to do with it ; reckon, if you had a husband, a wife, or 



174 



Pop ular Christianity. 



child in slavery, and you could buy them out, how 
much of the money you would keep. Reckon what 
you ought to keep while thousands of your brethren 
are the slaves of sin and the devil, when your money 
would help to deliver them. Reckon this matter as 
you would reckon with your steward. 

You give your steward possession of certain pro- 
perty to manage for you ; you know that he must eat 
and drink, and have a place to rest in ; if he is a good 
servant, you say, " Here, John, I want you to accom- 
plish that work for me in so many months, and I 
place at your disposal these resources. Get in these 
debts, see these creditors, receive such and such 
moneys, do such and such things. You may take out 
all that is necessary to keep you in comfort and health 
(and if he has a family), as much as your family re- 
quires, not for extragavance, but for your necessary 
comfort, while you are doing my business." Would 
you reckon that such a steward had a right to spend 
your money in extragavant living, or hoard it up for 
his own personal ends ? Are you a steward of God ? 
And do you expect to give an account to Him who 
shall judge both quick and dead ? If so, what will 
you say when He demands an account of your steward- 
ship ? 

The household god next in importance, and which 
is perhaps the most popular both of the household and 
the nation, is the 

God of Education. ' 

Everything must bow to the scholastic education of 
the children. Their very health is sacrificed in hun- 
dreds of instances ; the whole of the domestic arrange- 



Household Gods. 



175 



ments, the convenience of father and mother and 
visitors must bow down to this god. The children 
must be educated, whatever else becomes of them. I 
touched very briefly on this subject in my address at 
Exeter Hall on " Family Religion/' and some friends 
seemed to infer that I was against education, whereas 
I have seldom talked with any one on the subject more 
profoundly impressed with its importance ! I adopted, 
many years ago, the sentiment of the philosopher 
Locke, who said that " in nine cases out of ten all the 
men we meet are what they are for good or for evil, 
for usefulness or otherwise, by their education."" I say 
I fully believe that, and have acted upon it in training 
my own family ; so you see my quarrel is not with 
education, but with a certain kind of education. 

I believe that a child ought to be educated every 
half-hour of its life — never ought to be left to itself 
in the sense of not having a recognised influence 
exerted over its mind. The question is then, What 
kind of education is the right kind to bestow upon 
children ? How ought you to educate them ? The 
same idea which helped us on the question of fashion 
may help us again here. What should be the great 
purpose of education ? Surely right education must 
be that which is calculated to help the child to attain 
the highest type of its kind, and to fit it for its highest 
destiny. You train your horse on that principle. 
You develop and strengthen it that it may be a perfect 
creature, having capacity developed for the highest 
service of which its nature is capable. I say that all 
right training ought to contemplate this end, and 
especially with respect to man, God's highest creature. 
Next comes the question, What is the highest type of 



176 



Pop ular G hris t la n ity . 



a man ? and the highest destiny of a man ? What 
ought we to aim at ? For if the aim is wrong, all our 
training will be wrong. I say that the highest type 
of a man is that in which the soul rules over the body, 
in which a purified, ennobled soul rules through an 
enlightened intelligence, and makes every faculty of 
the being subservient to the highest purpose, the 
service of humanity and the service of God ! If I 
understand it, that is the highest type of man and his 
highest destiny. And it seems to me that all educa- 
tion that falls short of this is a curse rather than a 
blessing. 

The aim of all rightly directed education is to make 
such men and women, and to fit them for such work, 
and if it fails of this, I say it is one-sided, unphilo- 
sophical, and irreligious, and that is my quarrel with 
modern education. I charge it with being all this, 
and that is the reason I did not educate my children 
after its theories ; I did not believe in them, and the 
results so far prove that I was right. 

Then first let me look at what ought to be the pur- 
pose of education. Most of you, nearly all, I presume, 
agree as to what I have stated. But the purpose of 
modern education is anything but this. It is for the 
most part planned and executed with a view to the 
aggrandisement or well-being of the individual, looked 
at in a worldly point of view. Parents look at their 
boy and say, "Now, what can we do with him?" 
They have all sorts of aspirations and ambitions for 
the boy, and they say, "Well, we must educate him, 
develop his intellect " — what for ? That he may use 
it for the service of humanity and the glory of God ? 
Oh no, that never enters their minds. They say, 



Household Gods. 



177 



" We will have him educated in order that he may 
shine in the world, or get up in the world. We will 
have a son who will be able to go to the bar, the 
senate house, or do anything else that their ambition 
fixes on. The aggrandisement op the individual is 
the end, not the universal good, and out of this wrong 
aim arises the undue estimate of mere scholastic 
education. What would you say of the training of an 
animal, if it were possible for the trainer to select one 
or two faculties, and develop and strengthen them to 
the exclusion, neglect, or extinction of other faculties ? 
Would you say that was right training ? 

The main idea of modern education is that of the 
imparting of knowledge. Knowledge is the idol 
which both the household and the nation to-day are 
worshipping more largely perhaps than any other, as 
if progress in knowledge constituted the true progress 
of man. Oh, if it were so, what a different world we 
should have to-day ; but we know it is quite the con- 
trary. We know that the more knowledge you give 
to an individual, without giving him a corresponding 
disposition to use it for good, the more you increase 
his capacity for mischief. Very often the most learned 
men live for the worst purposes ! But, alas ! the very 
flower of the youth of our nation are sacrificed to this 
modern deity. The notion is that our youth must be 
educated in this mischievous sense; they must be 
crammed with knowledge; whether it be a curse or 
a blessing to them is not the question, but they must 
have it. They must learn the dead languages, and 
read bad literature, in order to make them like the 
rest of the world around them, no matter what be- 
comes of their morals; they must be crammed with 

N 



178 Popular Christianity. 



science, — much, of it falsely so called ; much of it 
in embryo, crude and shallow — the shallow theories 
of minds trying to grasp profound thoughts, and get- 
ing lost in the fogs of their own folly, landing the 
poor pupils on the strand of infidelity and atheism. 
The intellect, the one faculty of the man, must be 
strained, and stretched, and crammed to the utter 
neglect, arid often destruction, of the moral faculties. 
And when you have done, what have you produced ? 
An enlightened animal, an intellectual monster, who 
walks abroad, treading under his feet all the tender 
instincts and most sacred feelings and aspirations of 
humanity. That is all you have produced; there are 
thousands such to be seen to-day. Alas ! my heart 
bleeds over the stories I hear all over the land, which 
I could give you as illustrations of this fact. All 
this mischief comes of upsetting God's order — cultivat- 
ing the intellect at the expense of the heart; being 
at more pains to make our youth clever than to make 
them good ! 

This false theory leads to false methods, and hence 
the deplorable condition of our nation to-day. It 
leads to the separating from home life our little boys 
of ten and twelve years of age, and our girls too, 
alas ! sending them away from the tender influences, 
and what ought to be the grand and noble inspira- 
tions of their mothers, to herd with boys of their own 
age and class, to have their moral nature manipulated 
by masters, often sceptical or immoral. Now I say 
and will maintain that the chief end of education is 
not mere teaching, but inspiration ; and if you fail to 
inspire your pupil with nobleness, disinterested good- 
ness, truth, morality, and religion, not only are all the 



Household Gods. 



179 



glorious ends of education lost, but you damn your 
pupil more deeply than he might have been damned 
without your education. I ask, Is it not so ? Take 
some of your own sons (alas ! I could point to num- 
bers round about) as illustrations of this fact. God 
has given every child a tutor in his mother, and she 
is the best and only right tutor for the heart. 

I defy you to fill a proper mother's place for in- 
fluence over the heart. If God were to depute the 
angel Gabriel, he could not do it. God has tied the 
child to its mother by such peculiar moral and mental 
links that no other being could possibly possess. I 
tell you mothers here, that if you are good mothers, 
you are committing the greatest wrong to send away 
your child from your homes, and I believe this wretched 
practice is ruining half our nation to-day. God com- 
mitted the child to its parents to be educated, not to 
the schoolmaster. You can employ the schoolmaster 
to teach his head, — and even then you must be very 
careful of what sort he is, or he will ruin the child ; 
but God committed the child to the parents to be 
educated, trained — that is, taught how to feel , think, 
and act. And it is to the mother especially belongs 
the art and the capacity to inspire her boy to love all 
that is noble and good, and disinterested, and grand 
in humanity, and to keep on inspiring him until he is 
strong enough in moral excellence; in other words, 
strong enough in God's likeness and grace to walk 
alone. Just as you tend him when he is a baby, and 
will not leave him to strangers, so, while he is a 
moral infant, you are to watch and keep and train 
him until he is able to walk alone. I set my soul 
on this with regard to my own children, and God 



180 



Popular Christianity. 



has enabled me to do it. I had a great fight over it 
in many ways, but I said, " I am determined to keep 
my children for God and goodness. They shall have 
the education that I think likely to help them to be 
useful to their generation, as far as possible ; but I 
will never sacrifice purity to polish, I will never sacri- 
fice the heart to the head." That was my resolve, 
and I see no cause to regret it. 

I think it was Fenelon who said that " the service 
of my family is more important than the service of 
myself, and the service of my nation is more important 
than the service of my family, and the service of 
humanity is more important than the service of my 
nation." That is my opinion. This is God's idea of 
man's highest vocation : " The Son of Man is come 
to seek and to save that which was lost." If God's 
type of manhood had been a being crammed with 
knowledge to the exclusion of the moral and religious 
sentiments, Jesus Christ would have been such a man, 
whereas He was the opposite. He combined all the 
tenderness, sublime devotion, and self-sacrifice of the 
woman with the intellect and strength of the man. 
He was God's model man. That is the type for us. 
Therefore, for the sake of your children and your own 
grey hairs, I beseech you to see to it that you train 
and educate them in His likeness. Alas ! I know 
many parents in this land to-day, who are wringing 
their hands in anguish for the consequences of a false 
notion of education, and yet there are tens of thousands 
more who are making the same experiment, to have the 
same results. 

I was staying in a mansion some time ago, where 
there was everything that wealth and refinement could 



Household Gods. 



181 



procure to make the parents nappy. But I thought as 
I looked at the dear old gentleman — one of the kindly- 
type of man, at whose table you like to sit down 
because of the genial intercourse and the generous 
sympathies of his soul towards all humanity — but I 
thought there seemed to be a gloom over the house- 
hold. I felt as if he had a sorrowful spirit, though I 
knew not why. After dinner, when we got into the 
library, he said, with trembling lips, — 

u I wish you could get a word with E 

I said, " Who is that ? " 

"My eldest son; do try to get a minute to speak 
with him/' 

" Why, what is the matter ? " I said. 

u I am afraid he has embraced sceptical opinions. 
I sent him to a professedly Christian school (ah, I 
thought, the old story !) and then to college, and now 
I am afraid he is nearly an infidel.'" 

And when I got hold of the young gentleman I saw 
that he was just of the type our modern schools pro- 
duce—self-conceited, self -indulged, proud, vain ; a 
young man who looked down on his father much as an 
antiquated picture or piece of furniture. Oh, these 
stories, they break my heart ! I felt that this dear 
old man spent his money on the education of his son, 
aud thought he was doing the best he could for him, 
to send him to a so-called Christian school and then 
to a so-called Christian college, and here is the result ; 
and there are thousands of such results ! 

Yet people send their sons over and over again to 
these schools and colleges, commit them knowingly 
to sceptical and infidel teachers — give them over, body, 
mind, and soul to them, to go through a process of 



182 Popular Christianity. 

education which necessitates the putting into their 
hands of text books containing all manner of idolatrous 
legends and impure and immoral histories, bringing 
into their imaginations all manner of profanities and 
impurities just at the most critical period of their 
history. And this is all done under the name of 
" Christian Education ! " 

I could tell you stories that would make you weep 
almost tears of blood at the consequences of these 
associations. Don't I know mothers to-day who are 
wringing their hands in agony, and fathers who are 
bowed down almost to the grave, broken-hearted, 
because of them ? Add to this education association 
with troops of godless, lawless, and frequently immoral 
youths, whom they are sure to have for their com- 
panions, and then wonder that youths isolated from 
their mothers, sisters, and all the refining and re- 
ligious influences of home life — put into these schools 
and colleges, and kept there frequently for seven or 
eight years, and I ask, Can parents be surprised that 
they receive them back without any principles, without 
any love for their parents, without any religion, and 
without any respect for humanity ? to walk about and 
trample under foot the most sacred instincts, and feel- 
ings, and aspirations of true manhood and womanhood, 
and to march over the nation to spread desolation and 
ruin wherever they go— moral waifs and strays — 
drifting down the current of humanity, down, down to 
everlasting shame ? 

This is the result of modern education falsely so 
called. I challenge anybody to disprove it. Now 
then, I say, let every Christian parent in his closet 
settle before God this matter. What will you make 



Household Gods. 



183 



your child ? Will you say, u I will be more concerned 
that he shall be a good, benevolent, holy man, working 
for the good of his race, than that he shall be one of 
those intellectual monsters, all head and no heart. I 
will rather that he should be poor and good than that 
he should be rich and wicked " ? When you come 
to that, you will save your children. But you say, 
" Well, I must have this position and that position for 
him, not because of the use he will be to humanity and 
the glory he will bring to God, but because he will be 
a bigger man, having social position and influence." 
Ah ! thousands have said that, and their sons have 
ended in being nobodys — idle, extravagant, spend- 
thrifts, taking all the patrimony of their brothers 
and sisters to keep them going in their evil courses. 
Truly " God is not mocked : whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap." 



TEE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CEB1ST. 



iS5 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING 
CHRIST. 



BY COMMISSIONER EAILTON. 

Dueing the past twenty years there has been growing 
up in the midst of Christendom an organization which 
has been all along denounced and opposed, in a 
manner remarkably resembling the opposition shown 
to Christ and His apostles by the religious and re- 
spectable people of their day. The very phrases 
applied to the latter have been those most commonly 
used in connection with the Salvation Army. 

Such expressions as " blasphemy/' " blasphemous 
performance/' "mockery of religion/' have been 
repeatedly used by the most thoughtful and influential 
critics with respect to this organization, and for what 
reason ? Simply because poor and unlettered men 
and women are found continually expressing an inti- 
mate acquaintance with God in terms almost identical 
with those which are common in the Psalms and the 
Gospels. The poor man cries, and the Lord hears and 
delivers him; the convicted publican smites on his 
breast and crys, " God be merciful to me a sinner/' 
but the unbelieving onlooker denounces his crying as 
an "intolerable noise/' and his declaration that he 
has been delivered, an " unwarrantable presumption." 
It is notorious that in thousands of buildings next 
Sunday, congregations of people who, a few years ago, 

187 



188 Popular Christianity. 



had nothing whatever to do with the worship of God, 
will be repeating exactly such-like experiences. Yet 
even some of those who regard these people with a 
somewhat friendly eye will excuse their making "a 
ioyful noise unto the Lord " as a " pardonable ex- 
travagance," and will explain that it is due to their 
u want of culture " that they do not worship God in 
the " decorous silence " which is customary in modern 
places of worship. As for the greater part of the 
community, they will denounce the whole of the pro- 
ceedings as an " outrageous nuisance/' " a farce/' 
etc., which " ought to be put down/' or got rid of, 
if it were possible, and which it is to be hoped " will 
not last long." 

Now it is a remarkable fact, worthy of the most 
careful study by all who would understand either the 
power of God or the times in which we live, that in 
the face of all this hostile opposition this Army will 
go on without altering its course in the slightest 
degree to gain public favour, and that in fact it has 
gone on steadily increasing during twenty years, in 
spite of such opposition. 

Five years ago this Army had only 442 corps and 
1,067 officers — persons, that is to say, employed in 
the work and supported by it. During the year 
1882 no less than 669 of the soldiers, — 251 of them 
women — were knocked down, kicked, or brutally 
assaulted in the streets ; fifty-six of the 530 buildings 
used were attacked and partially wrecked, and eighty- 
six officers or soldiers, fifteen of them women, were 
locked up and imprisoned by the authorities in con- 
nection with the open-air services. Bishops, editors 
of religious papers, chairmen of great religious assem- 



The Salvation Army folloiving Christ. 189 

blies united to denounce the Army in the exfcremest 
terms ; but at the end of five years it is found to 
consist of 2,153 corps, under the leadership of more 
than 5,200 officers. 

Now, if it be correct that the Army systematises 
blasphemy, this prodigious increase is truly a calamity ; 
but if, on the contrary, it is found that thousands whose 
every second sentence was formerly an oath, and who 
neither feared God nor regarded man, are now to be 
seen clothed and in their right minds, singing (though 
it may be in rough style) the praises of God and living 
honest, industrious, and benevolent lives ; then surely 
these figures eloquently demonstrate that the truth 
lies entirely on the other side, and that this vast 
working-class organization is, after all, acting in 
conformity with the will of God, and therefore blessed 
and helped by Him, involving the inevitable con- 
clusion that the common opinion of the day is in 
violent opposition to the spirit and work of Jesus of 
Nazareth. 

Let us examine a little more closely the method 
of the Army's increase, as illustrated by one of its 
most recent advances. A couple of young girls, 
formerly engaged in domestic service, declare them- 
selves to be called to go out and preach the Gospel. 
For this purpose they place themselves at the disposal 
of the only religious organization in the world which 
thinks it right to give them this opportunity, and 
after careful examination into their character, they 
are sent off to a foreign country, where they are to 
raise an Army corps in a certain small town. The 
building in which they are to gather their congrega- 
tion is simply a long-disused workshop, where a 



190 Popular Christianity. 



number of unbacked seats have been placed. There 
is not a single person in the town who can be regarded 
as friendly to their mission, and most people consider 
their appointment as directly opposed to the will of 
Christ. Yet night after night their humble barracks 
are crowded with an audience consisting mainly of 
persons who have never worshipped God before. The 
meetings are interrupted, and violent scenes some- 
times occur. Yet, as is common all over the world, 
those two officers have raised a corps in a short time. 

And what is their corps ? It consists of working 
men and women who are ready to stand up in the 
meetings and add their testimony to that of their 
officers, that Jesus Christ is a living Saviour. In the 
language of apostles and psalmists, not quoted but 
reproduced almost in identical terms from their own 
experience, they say that they were up to the 
time of their coming to these meetings t€ afar off by 
sin and wicked works, but have now been brought 
nigh to God by the blood of the Cross that He has 
filled their hearts with peace and gladness such as 
they never found while in pursuit of worldly pleasure, 
— a peace and gladness which rather increase than 
diminish under the scorn and opposition of family, 
friends, and workmates. It is not long before some 
of these converts are found expressing their highest 
ideal of duty in the desire to do exactly what their 
officers did when they left home, situation, worldly 
comforts and prospects, and embarked on a life of 
poverty and difficulty such as they have seen worked 
out before their eyes, in order to spread the glad 
tidings of a real Saviour from sin, whom^they person- 
ally know. 



The Salvation Army following Christ. 191 

Every step in the Army's progress has been accom- 
plished in some such, way as this, and the astonishment 
to most of us is not that such results should follow, 
but that people of intelligence should either continue 
with their eyes closed to it all, as though it had no 
existence, or else with persistence object, as though 
the Army were violating in every way the will of God. 
Again I say, this drives one inevitably to one of two 
conclusions, — either the army must be a system of the 
most terribly God-dishonouring delusion, — a curse to 
the world of the most awful kind, or else, if it be indeed 
what it professes to be, inspired, moved, and directed 
by Him — then the peoples of our day must have de- 
parted far from the spirit and teaching of God, both 
by His prophets and His Son, to have come into direct 
collision with these forces acting under His leader- 
ship. 

If we search still more deeply into the secret of the 
Army's life and activities we shall find at every step 
the phenemon of a faith and practice exactly similar to 
those which the language of psalmists and apostles, 
literally taken, describe. Here are poor fishermen 
who declare that they have heard Jesus Christ calling 
them to leave all and follow Him. They say that He 
walks by their side on the shore and sails with them 
over the stormy deep ; that they commune with Him in 
the night watohes ; that whereas, but a short time ago, 
they were so utterly in darkness as to know nothing 
of the possibility of prayer, they now see clearly those 
great spiritual truths which have sustained their com- 
rades in ages past ; that God Himself is their light, and 
gives them to see, day by day, amidst the most toilsome 
occupations and the most ruffianly surroundings, more 



192 



Popular Christianity. 



and more of Himself and His will concerning them. 
Nobody pretends to question that the lives of multi- 
tudes of such men have been, as the result of their 
connection with this Army, transformed as completely 
as they themselves declare that their inward experi- 
ences have been. Here are people who, but a few 
years ago, received with blows and curses those who 
spoke to them in the name of Christ, but who now 
manifest the same tender love towards those who ill- 
treat as was shown in the first place towards them- 
selves — men and women who gladly bear contempt, 
abuse, poverty, and suffering of every kind, that they 
may spend the part of life which still remains to them 
in proclaiming their Saviour ; men and women whose 
want of education and of many qualifications that one 
would suppose to be desirable for such a work, cannot 
prevent from profoundly impressing the souls, and 
thus changing the lives of multitudes of others. How 
is it all to be accounted for ? We must either accept 
their own account of the marvel, and conclude that it 
is by the power of Jesus of Nazareth that these men 
see and walk thus in the presence of us all, or else 
we must find some other way of accounting for the 
change wrought in them. 

Attempts of this kind have indeed been made, but 
they do not commend themselves to very serious at- 
tention. " Excitement — all excitement ! " some have 
said. But has religious excitement ever been known 
to last for years consecutively in individual cases ? 
Generally speaking, the duration of a wave of popular 
excitement upon any subject is to be measured by 
weeks, or by months at most. But here we have huge 
audiences gathered continuously, Sunday after Sunday ^ 



The Salvation Army following Christ. 193 

for years, and men and women devoting themselves to 
the holding of services said to be of the " most ex- 
hausting character/' night after night, without inter- 
mission. How can any mere excitement account for 
all this ? 

A somewhat more reasonable theory is that the 
Army owes all its successes to a "rigid discipline." 
But is not this begging the whole question? That 
the Army maintains and extends its influence largely 
as the result of military order and system is undoubt- 
edly true ; but the question is how men and women, 
hitherto averse to all religious control, and indeed, 
control of any kind, are induced to submit themselves 
without fee or reward to the orders of those who are 
often in every way their inferiors. Look at that 
young lad, not out of his teens, commanding a corps 
in some large city. His every sign is obeyed by men 
and women old enough to be his grandparents, by 
tradesmen who were accustomed to manage business 
affairs before he learned arithmetic (what little he 
knows of it), by sergeants and soldiers of the Army, 
who have served years longer than himself in it, and 
some of whom know more of God and mankind, more 
of the work and literature of the Army, than he does. 
Whence all this ready obedience, this systematic 
labour under such leadership ? It is easy to explain 
all upon f< the love of Christ constraineth us " prin- 
ciple, " submitting yourselves one to another in love; " 
but take that away, and what becomes of the Army's 
discipline ? 

The Army's discipline is all the more remarkable 
when we remember that it is applied amongst all 
nations alike, and that in the world's three greatest 

o 



194 Popular Christianity. 



Republics it is carried out as successfully as amongst 
communities more accustomed to the idea of sub- 
mission to absolute authority. Moreover, the marvel 
of general and absolute obedience, rendered without 
murmuring by persons of all sorts and conditions, 
scattered all over the world, is all the more striking 
at a time when any approach to the exercise of author- 
ity in connection with religious work is becoming 
more and more out of the question. 

Just consider for a moment what this Army dis- 
cipline amounts to. Forty thousand times this week, 
and every week of this hot summer, bodies of men and 
women are induced, after having toiled all day at 
their usual employment, to walk a more or less con- 
siderable distance from their homes, and place them- 
selves under the leadership of officers who keep them 
from two to three hours engaged in praying, singing, 
speaking, marching through the streets, standing in 
narrow dirty alleys and courts, or sitting on unbacked 
seats in the close atmosphere of uncomfortable build- 
ings. Yet this only represents the public services of 
the Army. We give up in despair any attempt to 
calculate the number of hours spent by scores of 
thousands of these soldiers in visiting, War Cry selling, 
and other labours, under the direction of their officers. 
All this will bear investigation and consideration to 
any extent; and the more it is considered, the more 
inevitable will be the conclusion that the Army's 
strength within and without must arise from a power 
far superior to anything human. If so, then the Army 
is everywhere a standing manifestation of the saving 
power of God, and a standing reproof to the " modern 
thought " which ignores that power. 



The Salvation Army following Christ. 195 

The one-minded and one-heartedness of the Army 
is strikingly exemplified in its newspapers and its 
prayers. It has twenty-four War Crys, published in 
as many different countries and colonies, in their several 
languages. In not one of these can there be found 
any recognition of the controversies which disturb 
the Christian world ! They represent minds always 
engaged upon the one subject, lives entirely devoted 
to the one object — the subjugation of the world to the 
dominion of Jesus Christ. In prayer this absolute 
union of heart and mind is even more remarkable. In 
the course of more than twenty years there have of 
course arisen frequently within the Army differences 
and disputings, which could not have been easily 
brought to an end but for the exercise of a strong 
central authority ; but it is a remarkable fact that 
these differences have scarcely ever arisen from any 
variety of opinions, and in only one or two instances 
from the introduction of any new teaching. I was 
very much impressed lately with the Army's oneness 
in prayer, during a tour in which I had the opportunity 
to observe closely the action of soldiers of half a dozen 
different nations in succession. I do not wonder that 
the Army is reproached with the constant use of a 
few phrases, repeated over and over again. The 
accusation is gloriously correct to this extent — that 
officers and soldiers, to whatever class or nation they 
may belong, and wherever you may meet them, appear 
to have their minds so concentrated upon the one great 
theme, and their whole energies so thoroughly called 
out for the accomplishment of the one result, that to 
hear one is to hear all. 

Now to what conclusion can one come but that either 



196 



Popular Christianity. 



all this union is produced by one Almighty Spirit 
working "all in all" — according to the Scriptures, 
making His real followers not only of one spirit but 
" of one mind/'' giving them to " see light in His 
light/' producing in every one the same purpose and 
the same entire subjection to the w r ill of Christ, — or 
else that we are in presence of the most astounding 
wonder of the age, without having placed before us 
any means of accounting for its existence ? 

This becomes all the more evident when we look at 
the financial system of the Army. To overcome the 
general indifference to religion and its teachers, it has 
become common, in our time, to endeavour to induce 
the poor to attend the ministrations of this or that 
religious community by the presentation of gifts, or 
the provision of gratuitous entertainments. The 
Salvation Army, on the other hand, goes to the people 
in every service with its collecting boxes, and pays 
the rental of expensive buildings everywhere by means 
of the poor man's pence. Hundreds of thousands of 
pounds are contributed in this way annually, the 
people not only meeting the cost of the services con- 
ducted in their own immediate neighbourhood, but 
assisting in the extension of the Army's work all over 
the world, and showing the greatest readiness to 
respond to every appeal from new enterprises. There 
are multitudes of persons whose incomes are between 
10s. and 20s. per week, who give to the Army one or 
two shillings of that amount, besides devoting so much 
of their time and strength to its operations, as already 
explained. The 5,000 officers who have given them- 
selves up entirely to the war, without the guarantee of 
any salary whatever, merely represent tens of thousands 



The Salvation Army following Christ. 197 

more who would gladly do the same thing, if we were 
able rapidly enough to arrange for their despatch to 
every part of the great world-field. We had more 
than 1,000 such offers in a few weeks of 1887, in 
England alone. To all these people home and comfort 
are as enjoyable as to yourself or any one else ; yet 
they glory in the possibility of a whole life of self- 
denying activity for Christ, and eagerly look forward 
to the day when, far from home and old friends, their 
bodies shall be lowered into a salvation soldier's grave, 
amid the tears and prayers of others now revelling in 
sinful indulgence, but induced by their life, example, 
and testimony to leave all and follow Christ. 

Let no one say in presence of a vast assemblage of 
facts like this, that it is no longer required of us, or 
no longer within our power, to follow in the footsteps 
of the prophets and apostles of the past. Amidst the 
snows of Lapland, as well as in the Indian jungle, on 
the outskirts of European occupancy in the far West 
and the other side of the world, as well as in the 
midst of crowded European and American cities, men 
and women are proving every day that the experiences 
of the Psalms, — the very experiences of God's presence 
and salvation, which in apostolic days made the poor, 
despised, and persecuted followers of the Messiah the 
happiest of beings, — are now within the reach of all who 
will equally deny themselves, take up their cross and 
follow Him who became poor in order to make others 
rich for ever. 

The Salvation Army deserves and demands the 
careful and patient study of all who would learn how 
best to follow God and hasten the coming of His 
kingdom. The more closely and carefully you examine, 



198 Popular Christianity. 

the more fully will you be driven to the conclusion — the 
opinions of the day to the contrary, notwithstanding — 
that those who truly wish to follow Christ at all costs 
can do so in this age as well as in previous ones, and 
will succeed, just as others have done before, in gaining 
the world's hatred, the smile of God, and the victory 
which He guarantees to all who trust in and obey 
Him. 

International Headquarters of the 
Salvation Army, London, E.C. 
July, 1887. 




Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London, 



BY MRS. BOOTH. 



Addresses to Business Gentlemen. Subjects : 
The Salvation Army : Its Relation to the State, to the 
Churches, to Business Principles ; its Fnture ; Answers 
to the Main Points of Criticism on the so-called Secret 
Book. Price, cloth and gold, Is. ; paper, 6d. 

Practical Religion. Papers on " Training Children/' 
" Worldly Amusements," "Woman's Right to Preach," 
" The Uses of Trial," etc. Price Is. ; cloth, Is. 6d. 
Several of the above Addresses are also published sepa- 
rately, price Id. each, or 6s. per 100. 

Aggressive Christianity. Containing amongst 
others, Addresses on "Witnessing for Christ," "Condi- 
tions of Successful Labour for Souls," " Being Filled 
with the Spirit," etc. Price Is.; cloth, boards, Is. 6d. ; 
cloth boards, extra gilt, 2s. 6d. 

Godliness. Being a Report of several Addresses at 
St. James's Hall, London, in 1882. Price Is. ; cloth, 
Is. 6d. ; extra gilt, 2s. 6d. 

Life and Death. Containing a series of unpub- 
lished Addresses, mainly to the Unconverted. Price Is, ; 
cloth, Is. 6d. ; extra gilt, 2s. 6d. 

BY THE GENERAL. 

The General's Letters. Being a reprint of the 
General's weekly Letters in the War Cry of 1885, to- 
gether with Life-like Portrait of the Writer. Paper, 
Is. ; extra cloth boards, gilt, 2s. 

Training of Children ; or, How to make the Chil- 
dren into Saints and Soldiers of Jesus Christ. Price, 
limp cloth, Is. 6d. ; cloth boards, red edges, 2s. 6d. 

Salvation Soldiery: A series of Addresses and 
Papers descriptive of the Characteristics of God's best 
Soldiers. With eight Illustrations. Price Is. ; cloth 
boards, Is. 6d. ; cloth, extra gilt, 2s. 6d. 

Holy Living ; or, What the Salvation Army Teaches 
about Sanctitication. Price Id. 

OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 

The " War Cry." The Official Gazette of the Sal- 
vation Army. The largest, cheapest, and best penny 
Religious Newspaper in the world. Containing Marvel- 



lous News of Salvation, Songs, etc., Addresses by the 

General, Mrs. Booth, and other Officers of the Army. 

Price Id., or 6s. 6d. per year, post free. 
The " Little Soldier." The Salvation Army 

Children's War Cry. Sixteen pages, largely Illustrated. 

Price fdf., or post free to any address, Is. Id. per quarter. 
" All the World." A Monthly Magazine devoted 

to the record of Salvation Army work in all lands. Price 

2d. ; Ss. per annum, post free. 

BY COMMISSIONER RAILTOK 
" Twenty-one Years' Salvation Army." 

Filled with thrilling incidents of the War, and giving 
what has been so long desired by many friends, a Sketch 
of the Salvation Army work from its commencement. 
Paper, Is. ; cloth boards, Is. 6d. 
Holiness Readings. By the Genekal, Mrs. Booth, 
the Chief-of- Staff, Miss Booth, and others. Being 
extracts from the Salvationist and the War Cry. 200 
pages. Price, paper, Is.; cloth, Is. 6d. Strongly 
recommended. Q . # 

BY THE AUTHOE OP " DRUM TAPS." 2nd Edition. 

A Cradle of Empire. Being a faithful description 
of that part of the Army's work accomplished by the in- 
mates of the Training Homes. Price 6d. and Is. 

Drum Taps. Being a series of Sketches illustrative 
of the Army's peculiar operations for the rescue of the 
"Lapsed Masses." By E. R. S. Illustrated. Paper, 
Is. ; cloth, Is. 6d. ; gilt edsres, 2s. 6d. 

All Sides of It. By Eileen Douglas. Being a 
number of sketches of the Army's work, showing how 
from the lowest depths of sin it is possible to rise to the 
highest platform of Divine grace, and live for the sal- 
vation of others. Price 3d. 

The Salvation Soldier's Guide. Being a Bible 

Chapter for the Morning and Evening of every day in 
the Year, with Fragments for Mid-day reading. This 
book contains also portions of Scripture suitable to be 
read as lessons in a public service. 570 pages. Limp 
cloth, 6d. ; red leather or cloth, Is. ; French morocco, gilt 
edges, Is. 6d. ; superior red leather, gilt edges, gilt 
lettering, 2s. ; red French morocco, circuit edges, gilt, 
2s. 6d. 



